occupy not a few of his thoughts; but the cause in which they were jointly embarked had the first claim on his services. Besides long letters written to a Catholic who had taken offence at his 'Caveat against Popery,' and to the Sheriffs of London on the state of Newgate, and the abuses practised by the jailers on such as either could not, or from scruples of conscience would not, buy their favours; he wrote a dignified and temperate letter to the High Court of Parliament, then known to be contemplating a more rigorous enforcement of the act against conventicles, explaining the principles of his body as to civil and political affairs, proving that the freedom they claimed was in no way dangerous to the State.

When his term of imprisonment was up, he went abroad for a time; at first into Holland, and afterwards into Germany, neither of which countries he had seen in his earlier travels. He could speak the Low Dutch pretty well, and made some converts to his opinions. Embden was one of the cities in which he made a great impression. The first meeting was held in the house of Dr. Haesbert, who was deeply struck with the new doctrines proposed by the English missionary; and after giving the matter three months' consideration, Haesbert openly embraced them, and was the first Quaker in that part of the continent. About twelve months later Frau Haesbert joined him, and a godly meeting was in course of time formed in Embden, which looked to Penn with the feelings of a converted country to the apostle of its conversion. In the days of

persecution which soon came upon them-when the members of the new sect were flogged in public, cast into loathsome dungeons, fed on bread and water, mulcted in heavy fines, and even banished from their native land-his voice was ever raised in their defence, and his influence used for their protection.

There were at this time many other religious communities in Holland in which Penn took a deep interest-various members of the great Puritan party of England, who had crossed over into that country on the return of the Stuarts, with the intention of ultimately migrating to the new world. To all these exiled sects America was the land of promise, the subject of their daily talk and nightly dreams. Many ships filled with emigrants had already gone out. At religious meetings and in domestic circles the accounts sent home by the adventurers of the perils of the sea-voyage, of the beauty and fertility of the new country, were read and re-read; and hardly a year passed by that did not witness the departure of a fresh band of these devout and sturdy founders of the great republic. The stories told by those who for a time were left behind of the trials from which they and their fellows had fled, of their unconquerable desire to found a free state in the depths of the wilderness, where every man should be able to worship God according to his conscience, of the dangers which their predecessors in the good work encountered and overcame, of their own anxiety to follow them to their new homeall this was deeply interesting to Penn, and served to revive the romantic dreams in which he had found

comfort while at Oxford. Though his thoughts on this subject assumed as yet no practical shape, his mind became more and more fixed, during this tour, on the land to which he saw the best men of his age going out as settlers. The germ of Pennsylvania was quickening into life.

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CHAPTER XVI.

MARRIED LIFE (1672-1673).

PENN was anxious to be near Guli Springett once again. Calling to see his mother at Wanstead on his way to London, he made a short stay in the capital, visiting old friends, reporting the results of his journey, and then posted down to Bucks. Received by the people of the Grange with open arms, by Guli Springett as her lover, and by Ellwood and Pennington as a champion of their faith, he passed in their society a considerable time, dallying with the days of courtship, and making preparations for his marriage. Not wishing to disturb Lady Penn at Wanstead, he took a house at Rickmansworth, six miles from Chalfont; and when everything was ready for Guli's reception, the marriage rites were performed in the early spring of 1672.

Their honeymoon lasted long. The spring and summer came and went, but Penn was still with his young wife at Rickmansworth. No flattery of friends, and no attack of foes, could draw him from that charming house. Since his expulsion from his father's house he had never known so much repose.

Seeing him surrounded by all that makes domestic happiness complete-a charming home, a beautiful and loving wife, a plentiful estate, the prospect of a family, and a troop of attached and admiring friends, those who knew him only at second hand imagined that the prisoner of Newgate and the Tower would now subside into the country gentleman, more interested in cultivating his paternal acres than in the progress of an unpopular doctrine. Those who reasoned so knew little of William Penn, and still less of the lady who had now become his wife. Some months given up to love, Guli would have scorned the man who could sink down into the sloth of the affections; who by outward showing to the world would have represented her alliance as bringing weakness to his character instead of strength.

The next three years of Penn's life were spent in working, writing, preaching. Guli rode with him from town to town, and as she had no little ones as yet in the nursery, she could give up all her time to missionary work. As she was past her thirtieth year, it seemed as though the name of Penn might only live in what her husband wrote and said. He never laid his pen aside. Beyond his labours as a preacher, he composed in these three years no less than twenty-six books of controversy, some of which were rather long, and two political pamphlets his treatise on Oaths, and England's Present Interests considered.

A controversy with Thomas Hicks, a Baptist minister, on the Inner Light, first drew him out of