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 those 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 and 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 Eng

land 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 said 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 ceremony warrants were issued by the Council to arrest him on a charge of treason.

Penn was tiring of these daily warrants of arrest, and this time took no pains to help his enemies in

their search. He ceased to run about the streets, to preach in public, and to court the general gaze. His wife was very ill, and Springett, his elder son, not strong. His family remained at Worminghurst, on the Sussex down, where he was often with them when the eyes of neighbouring justices of the peace were shut. But he was neither in disguise nor hiding. Though he stayed in London mostly, he lived in his own house, engaged in writing books. 'I know my enemies,' he wrote, 'their true character and history, and their intrinsic value to either this or any other government. I commit them to time, with my own conduct and afflictions.' He was well aware how much a man must pay for leave to do good, but he was ready to pay out that price.

279

CHAPTER XXX.

A HOUSE OF DOLE (1692-94).

WHEN Penn was under cloud, and driven away, the Council made quick work of his American affairs. Their object was to bring his province under more direct control, and on the tenth of March, 1692, an Order in Council took away his government, and placed it in commission, with a view to joining Pennsylvania with New York. So far as King William meddled, the question was decided on military grounds. Colonel Fletcher was the governor of New York, and William wished to strengthen Fletcher, who was menaced by the French. No case was urged against the rule of Penn, except that it was one of peace. No lack of faith or loyalty was proved against him. William felt that during war the city of fraternal love must be defended from the French and Iroquois, then hovering on the frontier, by a rougher arm than Penn's, and he desired his Council to prepare the draft of a commission for his signature, uniting in a single hand the governments of Pennsylvania, Delaware, the two Jerseys, New York, and Connecticut.