Hence, and on account of the error which gave birth to it, the society was obliged to notice it, and in consequence several so acting were disowned, Among these was John Perrot. The said John Perrot and John Luft. supposing themselves to have been moved in this manner, or to have had a divine revelation for the purpose, undertook a journey to Rome with a view of converting the Pope. They had not been long there when they were taken up and put into prison. Luff was sent to the Inquisition, where he died, but not without a reasonable suspicion of having been murdered there. Perrot was put into a bedlam or hospital for madmen; from which being extricated, and this only by great interest, he returned to England. He had not beeu long at home, when he maintained that in the time of prayer men should keep their hats on, unless they had an immediate internal motion or notice to take them off; and he exemplified this doctrine by his practice into whatever meetings he went. It was in consequence of this irregularity of conduct, after many admonitions, that he was disowned. Soon after this his exclusion from membership an anonymous pamphlet appeared, but yet written by himself, called "The Spirit of the Hat." This occasioned William Penn to publish a reply, to which he gave the curious title of "The Spirit of Alexander the Coppersmith lately Revived, and now Justly Rebuked." He had, however, scarce ushered it into the world, before Perrot wrote against the church order and discipline of the Quakers. This compelled him to enter the lists again, when a publication called Judas and the Jews Combined against Christ and his Followers" was the result of his labour.

"A

Besides the works now mentioned, he wrote in the same year, Discourse of the General Rule of Faith and Practice, and Judge of Controversy," and "The Proposed Comprehension Soberly and Not Unseasonably Considered;" also Six Letters of public concern, all of which are extant: one to the suffering Quakers in Holland and Germany; another to the little Church of the same established in the United Netherlands; a third to those who were then settled in Maryland, and in whose behalf he had interfered with the Attorney General of that colony and the Lord Baltimore relative to their scruples against oaths; the fourth to John Collenges, a doctor of divinity, in defence of his own book called "The Sandy Foundation Shaken;" a fifth to Mary Pennyman, who had taken offence at his book entitled "Judas and the Jews Combined against Christ and his Followers;" and the sixth to Justice Fleming, who was deputy lieutenant of the county of Westmoreland, and who had been harsh as a magistrate towards the Quakers. From the latter I give the following extract, on account of the just sentiments it contains. "The obligation (says he) which thy civility laid upon the person who is now my wife, when in the north in 1664, is, with her being so, become mine. Not to acknowledge, though I could never retaliate it, were a rudeness I have not usually been guilty of; for, however differing I am from other men circa sacra, that is, relative to religious matters, and to that world which, respecting men, may be said to

begin when this ends, I know no religion which destroys courtesy, civility, and kindness. These, rightly understood, are great indications of true men, if not of good Christians."-And a little further on he adds, "That way is but a bad way of making Christians which destroys their constitution as

men."

CHAPTER X.

A. 1674-TRIES TO STEM THE TORRENT OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION BY A LETTER TO BOWLS-AND TO TWO OTHER JUSTICES-AND TO THE KING-WRITES FOR THE SAME PURPOSE "A TREATISE OF OATHS"-ALSO "ENGLAND'S PRESENT INTEREST CONSIDERED"CONTENTS OF THIS WORK-ALSO "THE CONTINUED CRY OF THE OPPRESSED FOR JUSTICE "-SHORT EXTRACTS FROM THE LATTER -ALSO A LETTER TO THE SENATE OF EMBDEN-PUBLISHES "NAKED TRUTH NEEDS NO SHIFT"-"IVES'S SOBER REQUEST PROVED FALSE" -AND "LIBELS NO PROOFS"-LETTER TO G. FOX ON THE SUBJECT OF HIS RELEASE.

THE declaration of indulgence to tender consciences in matters of religion, which was stated to have been granted by Charles the Second in 1671, had, for the short time it was in force, secured both the Quakers and other Dissenters from persecution; but in the year 1674, to which I now come, an occurrence took place, which became the means of removing it. The Parliament, though upon the whole friendly to religious toleration, considered this declaration of indulgence by the King as an undue extension of his prerogative, and therefore called it in as illegal. This measure was wilfully misinterpreted by those in office, who were bigots, as implying a wish on the part of Parliament that all privileges to Dissenters should be withdrawn ; and therefore, to gratify their own barbarous prejudices, they availed themselves of this opportunity to consider the Conventicle Act as in force, and to. renew their old practices. These cruel and wicked proceedings roused again the spirit of William Penn, and kept him employed, as we shall see, for nearly the remainder of the year.

Justice Bowls having led the way in Wiltshire by the persecution of Thomas Please, he was the first to attract the notice of William Penn; but the latter, not aware that this example would be so soon and so extensively followed, addressed to him only a short letter on the occasion.

The next breaking out of intolerancy was in Middlesex, where two justices of the peace summoned several Quakers before them, who had been charged with having met together in religious worship contrary to law. William Penn, on being made acquainted with the fact, addressed a moderate and respectful letter to them, in which he appealed to their own good sense on this subject. Among the many excellent passages contained in it, I shall

select the following: "Next, let it be weighed," says he, "that ce come not to our liberties and properties by the Protestant religion. Their late rises higher. Why then should a nonconformity to it, purely conscientious, deprive us of them? This or that sort of religion was not specified in the ancient civil government "—and further on he observes thus: "The nature of body and soul, of earth and heaven, of this world and that to come, differs. There can be no reason, then, to persecute any man in this world about any thing that belongs to the next. Who art thou, says the Holy Scripture in this case, that judgest another man's servant? He must stand or fall to his master, the great God. Let tares and wheat grow together till the harvest. To call for fire from heaven was no part of Christ's religion. Indeed he reproved the zeal of some of his disciples. His sword is spiritual, like his kingdom. Be pleased to remember, that faith is the gift of God, and what is not of faith is sin. We must either be hypocrites in doing what we believe in our consciences we ought not to do, or in forbearing what we are fully persuaded we ought to do. Either give us better faith, or leave us with such as we have; for it seems unreasonable in you to disturb us for that which we have, and yet be unable to give us any other."

But, alas, the evil began seriously to spread! The same spirit of persecution appeared in Somersetshire. Humsheer, the town clerk of Bridgewater, and William Bull and Colonel Stawell, two justices of the peace for that county, were conspicuous for their severity there. Several Quakers were fined on suspicion only. Fines were levied upon others without warrants, and this to the breaking of locks and bolts. Goods were seized and taken, which were of twice the value of the fines; and, where the former were not of equal value with the latter, the parties were sent to gaol. These proceedings becoming known to William Penn, he thought it time to interfere more seriously; and therefore, hoping to set aside these practices by a summary proceeding, he addressed a letter immediately on the subject to the King.

This letter appears to have been of no avail (nor indeed could the King help himself); for persecution still continued, and it not only spread to other counties, but was carried on by a revival of that unjust procedure, by which William Penn himself had been sent to Newgate by Sir John Robinson, as mentioned in a preceding chapter; that is, when magistrates could not convict Quakers of the charges brought against them, they offered them the oath of allegiance; knowing that, if they obeyed their own scruples, they could not take it, and that, if they refused, they might be sent to prison. This being the case, and innocent men being thus tortured legally, William Penn was of opinion, that the country at large ought to know what the Quakers had to say for their conduct, when put to the test, on such occasions. Accordingly he published "A Treatise of Oaths," in which, first, he gave to the world all those reasons, both argumentative aud scriptural, upon which they grounded their refusal to swear before the civil magistrate; hoping

that these, when known, would at any rate shield them from the charge of disaffection, and, by so doing, that possibly they might put an end to the oppressive process in question. He then endeavoured to enforce these reasons by a learned appeal to the opinion and practice of the ancients, as it related to the Heathen world; by a reference to the testimony of the most famous Jewish writers; and by quotations from the sayings and writings of Christians of all ages, taking in those of fathers, confessors, martyrs, and others eminent both among the laity and the church.

Persons were

But this work, however it might have softened some, had not the least influence (such was the religious fury of the times) where it was most to be desired. Bigots, who had power, still continued to abuse it. thrown into gaol, so that parents and their children were separated. Cattle were driven away. The widow's cow was not even spared. Barns full of corn were seized, which was thrashed out and sold. Household goods were distrained, so that even a stool was not left in some cases to sit on, and the. very milk boiling on the fire for the family thrown to the dogs in order to obtain the skillet as a prize. These enormities sometimes took place on suspicion only that persons had preached to or attended a conventicle; and to such length were they carried, that even some of those who went only to visit and sit by their sick relations were adjudged to be a company met to pray in defiance of the law. In this trying situation William Penn attempted again to stem the torrent by a work of a new kind. He indulged a hope, that, if he could not affect some men's minds by one kind of argument, he might by another. In addition, therefore, to his moral and religious Treatise upon Oaths, he published a political one under the following title: "England's present Interest considered with Honour to the Prince and Safety to the People, in Answer to this one Question, What is most fit, easy, and safe at this Juncture of Affairs to be done for quieting Differences, allaying the Heat of contrary Interests, and making them subservient to the Interest of the Government, and consistent with the Prosperity of the Kingdom? submitted to the Consideration of our Superiors."

Of this admirable work I cannot but notice the contents. He began it by a short preface. In this he showed the heated and divided state in which the kingdom then was on account of religious differences. He maintained that what had been done by the Government to produce uniformity had failed; and that it had been productive not only of no good, but of much misery. He explained the nature of this misery by specific instances. He then stated the question as I have just given it in the title of the book, and answered it by asserting, that the thing most fit, safe, and easy to be done, would be a determination by the Government, first, upon an inviolable and impartial maintenance of English rights; secondly, upon conducting itself so as to act upon a balance, as nearly as it could, towards the several religious interests; and, thirdly, upon a sincere promotion of general and practical religion.

Having finished this, the preface, he came to the body of the work, in which he considered the three parts or divisions of the answer as now given. In handling the first, or the determination by Government upon an inviolable and impartial maintenance of English rights, he explained what he meant by the latter. Englishmen, he said, had birth-rights. The first of these consisted of an ownership and undisturbed possession, so that what they had was rightly their own and nobody's else, and such possession and ownership related both to title and security of estate, and liberty of person from the violence of arbitrary power. This was the situation of our ancestors in ancient British times. They who governed afterwards, the Saxons, made no alteration in this law, but confirmed it. The Normans, who came next, did the same. William, at his coronation, made a solemn covenant to maintain the good, approved, and ancient laws of the kingdom, and to inhibit all spoil and unjust judgment. The same covenant was adopted by his successors, and confirmed by Magna Charta.-The second birth-right of Englishmen consisted in the voting of every law that was made, whereby that ownership in liberty and property might be maintained. This also was the case, as he proved by quotations from laws and an appeal to history, in British, Saxon, and Norman times.The third birth-right of Englishmen consisted in having an influence upon and a great share in the judicatory power, so that they were not to be condemned but by the votes of freemen. This practice, he said, though not perhaps British, obtained very early in Saxon times. It was among the laws of Ethelred, that in every hundred there should be a court, where twelve ancient free men, together with the lord of the hundred, should be sworn that they would not condemn the innocent or acquit the guilty. The same law continued to be the law of the land under different kings, till it was violated by John; when Magna Charta restored it. Magna Charta, however, he maintained, was not the nativity, but the restorer of ancient English privileges. It was no grant of new rights, but only a restorer of the old.He then explained the Great Charter of England, and endeavoured to show by an appeal to reason, law, lawyers, and facts themselves, that the people of England could not be justly disseized of any of these fundamentals without their own consent collectively; nor could their representatives, whatever else they might do, constitutionally alter them. If, however, any alteration should be made in these great fundamentals of the constitution, the reason should be the inconvenience or evil of continuing them. No other reason could be pleaded in excuse; but no such justification had been attempted. Nothing then, he maintained, could be more unjust than to sacrifice the liberty and property of any man for religion, where he was not found breaking any law which related to natural or civil things. Religion, under any modification or church government, was no part of the old English constitution. "Honestè vivere, alterum non lædere, jus suum cuique tribuere," that is, To live honestly, to do no injury to another, and to give every man his due, was enough to entitle every native to English privileges. It was this, and not his