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CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE (1655-1661).

ADMIRAL PENN's arrest (September 20, 1655) threw his family affairs into confusion. Margaret was at Wanstead with the younger children, Peg and Richard. William was at school in Chigwell. Uncle George had just arrived with proofs of his great losses by the Inquisition: twelve thousand pounds, besides his house, his business, and his wife. was expecting Admiral Penn to aid him with the Lord Protector, but instead of finding his famous brother powerful at Whitehall, he found him fretting in a dungeon of the Tower.

He

Margaret fetched her son William to Wanstead, where he fell into a low and feverish state of mind. One day a sort of vision came to him. Sitting in his room he was surprised by a strange feeling in his heart, and by as strange a radiance in his chamber. What it was that filled his veins and flashed into his eyes he could not tell. He was not yet eleven years old. But as he sat alone, in wretched mood, and in a darkish room, he felt a joyous rush of blood along his veins, and saw his chamber fill

with what he called a soft and holy light. It was a vision and a visitation. What it meant he could not say; but that he felt the sudden joy and saw the sacred light, he knew and held so long as he could know and hold by any incident of his early life.

The Admiral made every effort to procure his freedom. He was soon aware that he must pay a heavy price for his enlargement. He must crave a pardon from the Lord Protector; he must formally confess his faults; he must surrender his commission as General of the Fleet; he must quit the service of his country. Nor were these conditions all. He was to live in future at his Irish house, near Cork, and was to have no share in the great distribution of Jamaica lands. Unable to do better, he was forced to sign these terms; the Tower was killing him; but on resigning his commission to the Lord Protector he was set at large. Five weeks in the Tower had all but fretted him to death.

Impoverished and dismissed-no longer paid as General of the Fleet-no longer ranked as claimant to a share of the Jamaica lands—no longer suffered to remain near London, Penn broke up his house at Wanstead, gathered in his little folk, and sailed, a poor and discontented man, for county Cork. Macroom, his future home, a town on the river Sullane, twenty miles west of Cork, had been the property of Lord Muskerry, one of the most vigorous partizans of Charles in Ireland. When the royal cause was lost, Macroom was seized by the victorious Roundheads, and the castle and estate were given by

Cromwell's order to his faithful' servant, Admiral Penn. The Lord Protector's policy in Ireland was to plant in every shire an English colony, and when he gave a patch of land to any favourite, he was careful that it should be near a castle or a fort. Macroom was strong enough to shield an English colony. A troop of horse and company of foot were stationed in the town, and Penn had been authorised and expected to send out a body of skilful husbandmen. His term of power had been too short for much to have been done; but some few English had arrived whose industry had much increased the worth of Cromwell's gift.

For more than three years Admiral Penn resided with his wife and little ones at Macroom, engaged in planting his estate. His eldest son, to whom this planting was a lesson of immense importance, was a bright and forward lad from twelve to fifteen years of age. Though tall and slim the boy was firmly knit. He liked to run and ride, to scull and sail, and had a passionate delight in country sports. In things of business he was almost like a man.

Besides the castle, town, and manor of Macroom, Penn held the neighbouring castle, town, and manor of Killcrea, the whole containing many thousand acres of good land, with much convenient wood. He bought more land from Roger Boyle, his friend and neighbour, whom he joined in drinking secret healths to Charles. He also prayed Lord Henry Cromwell, son of Oliver, for leases of some districts near his property, alleging that he wished to tenant them with English hands. With sure and patient toil,

assisted by his active son, who seemed to have a natural bent that way, the Admiral improved his lands; here mending roads, there forming nurseries, in a third place planting gardens, in a fourth place building farms. In three years the estate had risen in rental from something like three hundred pounds a-year to eight hundred and fifty-eight pounds ayear.

Good tutors were in plenty at Macroom and Cork, and Penn the Younger made such rapid progress in his learning that at fifteen he was ripe for Oxford, and the Admiral, on talking with his friends, Ormonde and Boyle, resolved that he should go to Christ Church.

This matter was arranged in 1659; a year of many changes in the Admiral's prospects. Cromwell died. So soon as sure intelligence of his death arrived in county Cork the Admiral put himself into correspondence with his royalist friends, Boyle and Ormonde; but on seeing how affairs went on in London they concluded that it would be well to wait events and not commit themselves by any overt act. They had not long to wait. Six months sufficed to wear out Richard Cromwell's force, and when the news of his deposition reached Macroom, Penn threw away his mask, declared for Charles the Second, and immediately set out for the Low Countries to kiss his master's hand.

Charles was so glad to see the Admiral that he knighted him on the spot, and promised him his lasting favour. Penn returned to England, where he found himself, on Monk's suggestion, called to serve

in parliament, with his old comrade, Sea-general Montagu, for the town of Weymouth. When the resolution for recalling Charles the Second was adopted by the two houses, Montagu was named commander of the royal fleet, and Penn took ship with him, in order to be one among the first to throw himself at his future sovereign's feet.

The King was kind to him; but Charles had friends much closer to his heart than Admiral Penn. Among these closer friends was Lord Muskerry, his father's partizan, whom he had recently created Earl of Clancarty. Lord Clancarty's house was that Macroom which Penn had been improving with his capital and skill. The King was fixed on giving Lord Clancarty all that he had lost; the Penns must therefore quit Macroom. His Majesty was pleased to say that they should have some other lands; but they must leave at once, in order that Clancarty might go home in peace. To soften this hard blow, the King appointed Penn a Commissioner of the Navy, with a salary of five hundred pounds a-year, and lodgings in Navy Gardens, and he promised to make the Lords Justices of Ireland find among the forfeited estates of Roundheads something that would more than pay him for his losses in Macroom.

Lady Penn being housed in her fine lodgings at the Navy Gardens, Admiral Penn was happy, though he had to keep a wistful eye on the Irish lands. He gave good dinners, kept high company, resorted, as the fashion led him, to the playhouse and the cockpit. Lady Penn set up her coach. The Admiral,