Читать книгу William Penn - Rupert Sargent Holland - Страница 6

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William Penn had studied at Oxford, had traveled and mixed with gay people on the Continent, had been entered as a law student at Lincoln's Inn, had been employed by the Duke of Ormond in Ireland, and now had decided to throw in his lot with the people of this new religion that had suddenly sprung up in England and who called themselves by the simple name of Friends. He stayed in Ireland, looking after his father's business at Kinsale, still wearing the bright clothes of a cavalier, but he went regularly to all the meetings of Quakers that were held in Cork. These meetings were no more popular with the government in Ireland than in England, and while Penn was attending one on September 3, 1667, several constables, with a squad of soldiers, appeared at the doors and arrested everybody on the charge of holding a riotous assembly. There is a story, perhaps not altogether true, that, as the first soldier entered the hall to break up the meeting, William Penn seized him by the collar, and would have thrown him down the stairs had not some older members interfered and told the young man that such an act would be inconsistent with the Quaker's love of peace.

Penn, however, was probably not as hot-headed as the story would indicate; he went with the other Quakers to the mayor, and that official, seeing that the young man wore cavalier dress, offered to set him free if he would give bond for his future good behavior. Penn would not agree to this; instead he argued that the arrest of the Quakers was altogether unlawful. Thereupon he was sent to prison, and from there he wrote a remarkably well-worded letter to the Earl of Orrery, the Lord President of Munster, setting forth the injustice of interfering in such a way with any people's religion.

The young man of three-and-twenty had stood by his new comrades, and had written an excellent letter on their behalf, but there was no gainsaying the fact that he himself was in a rather bad plight. The dashing young cavalier, son of the courtier Sir William Penn, and a member of the Duke of Ormond's court at Dublin, had actually been caught in all his fine clothes at a meeting of the Quakers, and had been marched off to prison with a troop of his new friends. That was an entertaining bit of gossip; but as soon as it came to the ears of the Earl of Orrery, that nobleman, being a friend of Admiral Penn, and anxious to rescue his son from the company of the Quakers, ordered that William should be released from prison. Time and again it happened that William Penn, being a cavalier as well as a Quaker, was gently handled by cavalier officers on account of his rank and position.

The Admiral had heard of this new "prank," as he chose to call it, of his son, and had ordered William home. William obeyed willingly enough. In his famous Diary we find Mr. Pepys, who was no great admirer of Admiral Penn, writing at this time: "At night comes Mrs. Turner to see us; and then among other talk she tells me that Mr. William Penn, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; that he cares for no company, nor comes into any; which is a pleasant thing after his being abroad so long and his father such a hypocritical rogue."

But other surprises were awaiting Admiral Penn. He soon found that William kept his hat on when talking to him, which, in the Admiral's opinion, was a mark of great disrespect. He sternly asked William what he meant by this. William boldly answered that it was a Quaker custom and that he was a Quaker. The father argued, pleaded, and stormed, and finally asked if William would not at least take off his hat in the presence of three persons,—his father, the king, and the Duke of York. This was a great concession on the part of the Admiral, and shows that he must at last have waked up to the fact of his son's determination. But all William would answer was that he would "consider the matter."

This answer made Sir William furious. He thought his son meant to ask the advice of some of his new friends. The son, however, asked no advice, but after long thought announced that he could not grant his father's request.

Then the Admiral, in a great huff, turned William out of the house, and the latter went to visit various friends, his mother secretly sending him money from time to time. Finally Lady Penn won her husband's consent to allowing William to return home; but his father treated William like a stranger and gave up trying to help a son, who, in his opinion, was such an ungrateful and stiff-necked fellow.