Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/293

 WILLIAM PENN 201 him, in 1662, for a journey to France, in hope that the gayety of that country would expel his new-fashioned and, as he regarded them, fanatical notions. Paris, however, soon became wearisome to William Penn, and he spent a con- siderable time at Saumur, for the sake of the instruction and company of Moses Amyrault, an eminent Protestant divine. Here he confirmed and improved his religious impressions, and at the same time acquired, from the insensible influ- ence of those who surrounded him, an increased polish and courtliness of de- meanor, which greatly gratified the admiral on his return home in 1664. Admiral Penn went to sea in 1664, and remained two years on service. Dur- ing this time the external effects of his son's residence in France had worn away, and he had returned to those grave habits, and that rule of associating only with religious people, which had before given his father so much displeasure. To try the effect of absence and change of associates, Admiral Penn sent William to manage his estates in Ireland, a duty which the latter performed with satisfac- tion both to himself and his employer. But it chanced that, on a visit to Cork, he again attended the preaching of Thomas Loe, by whose exhortations he was deeply impressed. From this time he began to frequent the Quakers' meetings ; and in September, 1667, he was imprisoned, with others, under the persecuting laws which then disgraced the statute-book. Upon application to the higher author- ities, he was soon released. Soon after the admiral again turned him out of doors. In 1668, he began to preach, and in the same year he published his first work, "Truth Exalted, etc." We cannot here notice his very numerous works, of which the titles run, for the most part, to an extraordinary length ; but " The Sandy Foundation Shaken," published in the same year, claims notice as having led to his first public persecution. He was detained in prison for seven months, and treated with much severity. In 1669 he had the satisfaction of being rec- onciled to his father. He was one of the first sufferers by the passing of the Conventicle Act, in 1670. He was imprisoned in Newgate, and tried for preaching to a seditious and riotous assembly in Gracechurch Street ; and this trial is remarkable and celebrated in criminal jurisprudence for the firmness with which he defended himself, and still more for the admirable courage and constancy with which the jury maintained the verdict of acquittal which they pronounced. In the same year died Sir William Penn, in perfect harmony with his son, toward whom he in the end felt the most cordial regard and esteem, and to whom he bequeathed an estate computed at ,1,500 a year a large sum in that age. Toward the end of the year he was again imprisoned in Newgate for sjx months, the statutable penalty for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, which was mali- ciously tendered to him by a magistrate. This appears to have been the last absolute persecution for religion's sake which he endured. Though his poor brethren continued to suffer imprisonment in the stocks, fines', and whipping, as the penalty of their peaceable meetings for divine worship, the wealthy proprie- tor, though he travelled largely, both in England and abroad, and labored both in writing and in preaching, as the missionary of his sect, both escaped injury,