Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/292

 200 STATESMEN AND SAGES or otherwise, had estranged the people ; but he remained arbitrary and absolute to the end. At the age of seventy-seven he died, after intense suffering, in 1715. He died a great king, but not a great man. WILLIAM PENN (1644-1718) w PENN was born in London, October 14, 1644. He was the son of a naval officer of the same name, who served with distinction both in the Pro- tectorate and after the Restoration, and who was much esteemed by Charles II. and the Duke of York. At the age of fifteen he was entered as a gentleman- commoner at Christchurch, Oxford. He had not been long in residence, when he received, from the preaching of Thomas Loe, his first bias toward the doctrines of the Quakers; and in conjunction with some fellow-students he began to with- draw from attendance on the Established Church, and to hold private prayer-meet- ings. For this conduct Penn and his friends were fined by the college for non-conformity : and the former was soon involved in more serious censure by his ill-governed zeal, in consequence of an order from the king that the ancient custom of wearing surplices should be re- vived. This seemed to Penn an infringement of the simplicity of Christian worship ; whereupon he, with some friends, tore the surplices from the backs of those students who appeared in them. For this act of violence, totally inconsist- ent, it is to be observed, with the principles of toleration which regulated his conduct in after life, he and they were very justly expelled. Admiral Penn, who, like most sailors, possessed a quick temper and high no- tions of discipline and obedience, was little pleased with this event, and still less satisfied with his son's grave demeanor, and avoidance of the manners and cere- monies of polite life. Arguments failing, he had recourse to blows, and as a last resource, he turned his son out of doors ; but soon relented so far as to equip