er, than his father and mother were about himself. Dark clouds were lowering on their roof. The Admiral never went to the Navy Board after the thirtieth day of March. He was requested not to come again. In April he resigned his seat at the Navy Board, and his official residence in the Navy Gardens. He retired with Lady Penn to Wanstead. Peg was with her husband in Yorkshire; Dick was on his travels in foreign countries. Admiral Penn was well-nigh sick to death, and in his loneliness he begged the Duke of York to interfere once more for his misguided son.

No length of weary days and nights induced the prisoner to unsay one word that he had said. To Arlington he wrote a manly letter of appeal against the treatment he was suffering at the Secretary's hands. Protesting that in a proper state of civil society men are not to be pursued and punished for opinions, he asserted, with a touch of humour, that the Secretary might be satisfied with denying his opponent any share of heaven, and leaving him his little corner of the earth. That men should not be free to eat drink, sleep, walk, trade, and think, because they differ as to things which belong to a future life he said, was dangerous and absurd. He held that men's opinions must be reached by reason, not by force. In his own case those who persecuted him had discovered their mistake and dared not bring him to an open trial. He invoked his English right to know the charge preferred against him, and be called to his defence. 'I make no apology,' he added, 'for my letter as a trouble (the usual style of supplicants), because I think the honour that will accrue to thee by being just and releasing the oppressed, exceeds the advantage that can succeed to me.'

All hope of seeing the prisoner yield was passing out of Arlington's mind, as well as out of that of Charles. They are mistaken in me,' said the prisoner; 'I can weary out their malice. Neither great things nor good things ever were attained without loss and hardship. He that would reap and not labour, must faint in the wind.'

The King was growing tired of a business which he had commenced in idle mood; and when the Duke of York renewed his suit, Charles called his chaplain, Edward Stillingfleet, into his cabinet, and begged him to go down into the Tower, and bring the young man there a prisoner to his senses, so that he might pardon him and set him free.

Canon Stillingfleet, though he was only thirtyfour years old, was thought to be the ablest controversial speaker in the Church. On all sides he was counted as a prodigy of nature. At the age of eighteen years he had been a fellow of his college. At the age of twenty-four he had published his Irenicum; and at the age of twenty-seven his Origines Sacrae. Dons at Cambridge and councillors in London vied with each other in promoting this accomplished scholar. Lord Southampton at the instance of Archbishop Shelden and Bishop Henchman, gave him the rich living of St. Andrew's, Holborn. He was preacher at the Rolls and lecturer at the Temple; he was canon residentiary of St. Paul's; and was the most popular preacher at Whitehall. 'I carried my wife and her woman,' writes Pepys, 'to Whitehall Chapel and heard the famous young Stillingfleet who is newly admitted one of the King's chaplains and was presented, they say, to my Lord Treasurer for St. Andrew's, Holborn where he is now minister, with these words: "That the Bishops of Canterbury, London, and another, believed he is

the ablest young man to preach the Gospel of any since the apostles." Henchman had employed his pen in controversy with the Jesuits. At the age of thirty-four he was already hailed as Stillingfleet the Great.

This eminent divine, so well prepared for argument with men like Penn, repaired to his apartments in the Tower. Of course the prisoner was no match for him in learning, but his gentleness and fortitude impressed the Canon's heart. With nothing but an open Bible, Penn contested every inch of ground with one who had a perfect library of the Fathers and the Councils in his memory. He wanted Penn to yield so far that Charles could set him free as an act of royal grace. Penn wanted to confront his enemies in a court of justice. Tell the King,' he said to Stillingfleet, 'that the Tower is the worst argument in the world.' His visitor would not press that point; he was too kind a man to take the Secretary's view. The Canon spoke of the King's favour to his family, of the Admiral's position in the service, of the prospects of advancement he was casting to the winds. Penn heard him plead in silence, for he held him, as all good and intellectual people held him in the highest honour; but the words he uttered in the Tower were empty sounds. It was a case of conscience, not of policy, and Penn was only one of many, who had been arrested for opinion's sake. His private ease was nothing, while so great a principle was at stake.

Penn could not own a fault where he was not in fault, and by his weakness put his persecutor in the right. 'Whoever is in the wrong' urged Penn, 'those who use force in religion can never be in the right.' The Canon carried these words to his royal master.

Not once, but many times the great divine went down to the Tower, to hold discourse with Penn. On questions of theology, the prisoner heard his visitor with zest. Stillingfleet brought down some of his recent writings, which he left for Fenn to read; and Penn, being made aware that other persons than Thomas Vincent were assailing him as one who had denied the divinity of Christ, composed a pamphlet in reply entitled, 'Innocency with her open face, presented by way of apology for the book entitled The Sandy Foundation Shaken,' which he sent into the world at once. "That which I am credibly informed to be the greatest reason for my imprisonment,' he wrote, 'and that noise of blasphemy which has pierced so many ears of late, is my denying the divinity of Christ.' He utterly repudiates such denying :' and proceeds to give some proofs of the divinity of Christ. The tract owed much to Stillingfleet, not only in quotations but suggestions. Every page betrayed the writer's study of his eloquent and learned visitor's recent works, especially of his discourse on Christ.

As nothing further could be got from Penn-no owning of his fault, no prayers to Arlington, no promise for the future—and as Charles had now been teased for seven whole months about the matter, which the Admiral and the Duke of York would not allow him to forget, his Majesty was pleased to declare himself satisfied with Stillingfleet's report and 'Innocency with her open face.' An order, under date of July 28, 1669, was sent to Robinson, instructing the Lieutenant of the Tower to deliver up his prisoner to Sir William Penn.

It was not in human nature that Lord Arlington should be pleased, and it was probably from

him that a report was spread of Penn being dis. charged on hard conditions. 'Young Penn, who wrote the blasphemous book' said one of the court gossips, 'is delivered to his father to be transported.' Admiral Penn was ill; so ill that he could rarely stir from Wanstead. Nothing had been done, as yet, about the purchase of a house and lands. Lowther was looking through the Yorkshire wolds for an estate, and hoping to secure a country place near Maske; but Admiral Penn, who clung to his design of settling in county Cork, desired his son to go at once to Shangarry Castle, where the property required a master's eye. Sir William hoped that in the management of his estate the young man's worldly passions would revive; and six weeks after his son's discharge from the Tower the Admiral sent him down to Bristol, on his way to county Cork.

'If you are ordained to be another cross to me.' said the Admiral, 'God's will be done; and I shall arm myself the best I can against it.' He was very sore at heart.

Arrived in Cork, Penn found the prison of that city full of Quakers; men of English race and faith, whose main offences were as he conceived, that they were hard workers and cautious traders. Jealousy had much to do with this repression of the Light, 'which was at least as much from envy about trade as zeal for religion.' From an early day the Friends had learned to buy and sell, and prosper in the ways of trade. The hour of Penn's arrival saw him at the jail. he held a meeting in the prison-yard, where he exhorted his brethren to be steadfast in their faith, and firm in their resistance to an unjust exercise of power. Without going on to Shangarry Castle, he set out for Dublin, where he called

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