USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. I > Part 20
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the "resentments" were, Penn said that he did not know, but that he supposed that James meant for him to make endeavors for James's restoration. With boldness and nobleness of heart, Penn avowed that he had loved James in prosperity, and could not hate him in adversity, had loved him for many favors, and would repay him with any private service, but would observe the duty to the State incumbent upon all its subjects, and had never thought of endeavoring to restore to James the Crown which had fallen from his head. It is further said that King William, who was present at the examination, was inclined to let Penn go; but, at the officials' suggestion, he was to be within reach.
On Aug. 31, 1689, Penn and Lord Baltimore were ordered to prepare duplicates of the orders they had sent, or were assumed to have sent, to their provinces for proclaiming the new Sovereigns, a messenger to be appointed by the King to go and return at their ex- pense.
On 9ber. 20, actually eighteen days after Black- well had proclaimed William and Mary in Pennsyl- vania, Edward Blackfan wrote from London a letter to the Secretary of the Council of Pennsylvania en- closing the duplicates of the orders and drafts which Penn was to send for such proclamation. The packet was carried to Philadelphia by Richard Morris, master of the ship "Philadelphia Merchant," and ar- rived there eight months later.
The collection now in progress of Penn's letters and other writings may be expected to clear up at least the chronology of his career in England. Until that great work be finished, we can not use all the information ex- tant. He appears to have been in the custody of a jailor or messenger on Oct. 24, 1689, the second day of the term of King's Bench, when, Luttrell tells us, a habeas corpus was obtained. On the next day, Penn was admitted to bail in a recognizance for £1000 with
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four sureties in £500 each. Pursuant to this, he ap- peared on Nov. 28, the last day of the term, and was discharged.
Queen Mary in 1690, administering the government in King William's absence, was alarmed by the defeat of the English at sea. As, it is claimed, a precaution against enemies at home, warrants were issued against Penn and others on a charge of high treason, perhaps without fresh evidence in Penn's case. They, not being found at the usual abodes, were deemed to have fled from justice. On July 14, a royal proclamation was issued reciting their conspiring to destroy the govern- ment, and their adhering to the enemy in the present invasion. Penn, among the others, was commanded to be seized, taken to the nearest Justice of the Peace, and by him committed to jail until delivered by law, the Justice of the Peace to notify the Privy Council. Penn wrote to the Secretary of State before July 19, offering to surrender, and asking to be admitted to bail. Penn was discharged on Aug. 15 on recognizance to appear in Court at the next term, Michaelmas. A news-letter of the 18th speaks of his being on bail. Luttrell mentions that on Oct. 23, the first day of the term of Court, Penn, being on recognizance, appeared before the King's Bench, when his case was continued to the end of the term. There being no real evidence at hand against him, he was discharged on coming into Court on Nov. 28, the last day.
Some time in or after April of that year, William Fuller, who had been a short time in France, and who was one of the chief witnesses against Crone for treason, and reaped reward thereby, went to Ireland, and, there spending the Summer and perhaps Autumn of 1690, gave testimony along with one Fisher and an Irishman, whose name is not mentioned in Penn's biographies or published letters, on the strength of which testimony Penn was indicted there for high
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treason. He not being found in that jurisdiction, where he had not been within twenty years, his estate was sequestered, and put up for rent, and the indictment and its incidents hung over Penn, it appears, until he had it discharged on his going to Ireland in 1698. Fuller, trying to live by the trade of informer, was unanimously voted an imposter and false accuser by the English House of Commons in 1691.
There is little doubt that Penn's powers of obser- vation caused him to be consulted, and his interest in politics caused him to dabble in matters from which he should have stood aloof; and a conspicuous instance was at the time of Preston's Conspiracy, so called after Sir Richard Graham, President of the Council in James's reign, and created by him Viscount Preston in the peerage of Scotland. For the interesting and pretty well attested details here omitted of this con- spiracy, the reader may consult Macaulay's History. There had been, according to a report found among the papers carried by Preston and his companions, a con- ference between some Tories and Whigs, agreeing that it would be possible to restore James II, if neither he nor Louis XIV came as a conqueror, but that James must accord the English a Protestant administration, with no other privilege for the Catholics than liberty of conscience, and must show a model of this at St. Germain's by preferring the Protestants about him to the Catholics, and must encourage seven or nine Pro- testant lords and gentlemen then in England to come to him, as a standing Council, and that the King of France must allow the English Protestants in that country to have chapels-all of which seems such a so- lution of the state of affairs that we could not blame Penn if he had proposed it. Furthermore, a declara- tion had been suggested for James to issue, viz: that the army brought with him would be sent back as soon as the Dutch were sent away from England. Various
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persons had written letters, which, under disguises, urged James to make a speedy invasion. It is not necessary to traverse Penn's denial of being at any formal conference, or of knowing what was on foot: but his letter without date to Viscount Sidney, as will be seen, means that Preston, in the latter part of De- cember, had a conversation with Penn, and Preston's report in his confession may be relied upon as showing that they canvassed the "state of mind" of various prominent personages, and that Penn-let us suppose not knowing the use to be made of it-expressed the opinion that the Earl of Devonshire, Lord Steward of the Household under William and Mary, and Earl Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain, and a number of others would be glad to see James back under certain condi- tions. It is not clear, but it is possible, that Penn even was the Mr. P. who is down in Preston's memorandum as giving him a commission for Flanders: the next words may have no connection with this, but are "hinder Eng. and D. from joining;" then comes "two vessels of 1501. price for Pennsylvania for 13 or 14 months." With the various letters and some infor- mation about the defence of the coast, Preston and John Ashton with a more innocent companion, Ed- mund Eliot, left London on December 31, 1690, in a fishing smack, hired to take them to France, osten- sibly for smuggling. They were overhauled and cap- tured, and the papers seized. Convicted of high treason, Ashton suffered death, but Lord Preston saved his life by a confession. Viscount Sidney wrote on Jany. 20, 1690-1, to the King that Preston had been tried on the preceding Saturday, and would endeavor to deserve his life at the King's hands, so that Sidney favored suspending the execution, and what Preston could say against Lord Clarendon, the Bishop of Ely, and Mr. Penn was of great importance. Sidney added that neither the Bishop nor Mr. Penn was to be found,
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and that Penn was as much in the business as anybody, and that two of the letters were certainly of his writing. So probably on this account, rather than by reason of anything which Fuller had said, had an officer been sent to arrest Penn at George Fox's funeral, which took place on January 16, 1690-1, at Bunhill Fields, London. Making a mistake as to the hour, it is explained, the officer was unsuccessful. Dixon, from mistaking the date of the subsequent proclamation for that of the war- rant, has contradicted Macaulay's statement of this plan to arrest; but it is found in the Quaker biographies of Penn, who himself says in a letter of 4 mo. 14, 1691, to Thomas Lloyd, printed by Janney : "That night, very providentially, I escaped the messenger's hands." Although the Marquess of Carmarthen said on Feb. 3 that Preston was the only witness against Penn, a proclamation, dated Feb. 5, 1690-1, was issued for the capture &ct., as in the proclamation of July 14 preced- ing (both proclamations printed by American Anti- quarian Society), of Francis, late Bishop of Ely, William Penn Esq., and James Grahme Esq., as hav- ing, for procuring an invasion by the French, &ct., held correspondence with Preston. Warrants against them for high treason were recited, as well as their absence from their abodes, and fleeing from justice. Penn had been making preparations to sail in the following April to Pennsylvania with a large number of settlers, and the Secretary of State had appointed a convoy to protect the vessels, but this, in fact everything but hid- ing, was now impossible.
After the discovery of the Preston Conspiracy, King William sailed from Gravesend for Holland on Jany. 18, and was not again in London until March. About Feb. 19, through arrangement made by Anthony Low- ther, Penn's brother-in-law, and, with consent of Queen Mary, allowing freedom from detention, Penn had a secret interview with Viscount Sidney, the Secretary
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of State. Sidney's letter to the King is reprinted by Dixon from Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland. Penn protested loyalty, and that he knew of no plot, and believed in none but what Louis XIV had laid, and of the bottom of which Penn thought that James II knew as little as other people; also Penn said that William had many enemies, and some who came over with him, or soon joined him, were more danger- ous than the Jacobites, among whom, Penn declared, there was no man who had even ordinary ability, that, if William would trust Penn, the latter would tell all he knew that would be for the King's interest to know, otherwise he would very unwillingly leave the king- dom; but that he could not appear as a witness, being unable to take an oath. On King William's return, and Preston's repetition in his presence of the confession, that crowned politician, knowing his precarious situa- tion on the throne, was disinclined to ferret out the dis- affected, and arouse their violent hostility. Two letters of this time from Penn to Henry Sidney, then Viscount Sidney, are printed as being to Lord Romney, the title of Earl of Romney being conferred on Sidney three years later. One, dated 22 A, 90 (April 22), to show to the King, asks permission to live quietly in England or America. In the other letter to Sidney, Penn offers to appear, if he will be believed, but says that he can not come out of retirement, and put himself in the power of his enemies: he denies all knowledge of in- vasions or insurrections or men, money, or arms there- for, or juncto or consult in order thereto, and says that he never met any of those named as conspirators, or prepared measures with anybody for Lord [Janney queries, Sunderland? but evidently Preston is meant] to carry with him as one sense or judgment, nor did Penn know of his, said Lord's, being sent for any such voyage, and adds: "If I saw him a few days before by his great importunity, as some say, I am
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able to defend myself from the imputations cast upon me, and that with great truth and sincerity, though in rigour, perhaps, it may incur the censure of a misde- meanor, and therefore I have no reason to own it with- out an assurance that no hurt should ensue to me." This letter is undated, but, from the answer, we find that it was written as King William was hurrying to Holland, whither he went in May. Neither Penn's story nor his body for punishment seems afterwards to have been sought. There was a report, which Ma- caulay can not be blamed for accepting, that Penn fled to France. Robert Harley, writing to Sir Edward Har- ley on Sep. 15, says: "William Penn got safe into France last week." This accords with Luttrell's Brief Relation, which, noting events of that month, says "Wm. Penn the quaker is gott off from Shoreham in Sussex and gone for France." It seems, however, that he stayed in London. Otherwise, some notice of his having been at St. Germain would have been taken by officials in the course of the years next following.
We may conclude that there was no proof before King William's officials, at least before those not par- ticularly Penn's friends, to convict him of knowingly aiding James. Had there been, Penn would have been deprived, if not of life, certainly of property, and prob- ably of both. It would have been necessary to make an example of him. There would have been no mercy shown to please such a weak body as the Quakers. His wealth would have added to the means of satisfying the adventurers in William's train; and statecraft, in the interest not only of the new party, but of the empire at large, was demanding the revocation of the grant of Pennsylvania.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, lost some favor with Charles II by writing the following, over the latter's bedchamber door, it is said :
17
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four sureties in £500 each. Pursuant to this, he ap- peared on Nov. 28, the last day of the term, and was discharged.
Queen Mary in 1690, administering the government in King William's absence, was alarmed by the defeat of the English at sea. As, it is claimed, a precaution against enemies at home, warrants were issued against Penn and others on a charge of high treason, perhaps without fresh evidence in Penn's case. They, not being found at the usual abodes, were deemed to have fled from justice. On July 14, a royal proclamation was issued reciting their conspiring to destroy the govern- ment, and their adhering to the enemy in the present invasion. Penn, among the others, was commanded to be seized, taken to the nearest Justice of the Peace, and by him committed to jail until delivered by law, the Justice of the Peace to notify the Privy Council. Penn wrote to the Secretary of State before July 19, offering to surrender, and asking to be admitted to bail. Penn was discharged on Aug. 15 on recognizance to appear in Court at the next term, Michaelmas. A news-letter of the 18th speaks of his being on bail. Luttrell mentions that on Oct. 23, the first day of the term of Court, Penn, being on recognizance, appeared before the King's Bench, when his case was continued to the end of the term. There being no real evidence at hand against him, he was discharged on coming into Court on Nov. 28, the last day.
Some time in or after April of that year, William Fuller, who had been a short time in France, and who was one of the chief witnesses against Crone for treason, and reaped reward thereby, went to Ireland, and, there spending the Summer and perhaps Autumn of 1690, gave testimony along with one Fisher and an Irishman, whose name is not mentioned in Penn's biographies or published letters, on the strength of which testimony Penn was indicted there for high
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ENGLAND.
treason. He not being found in that jurisdiction, where he had not been within twenty years, his estate was sequestered, and put up for rent, and the indictment and its incidents hung over Penn, it appears, until he had it discharged on his going to Ireland in 1698. Fuller, trying to live by the trade of informer, was unanimously voted an imposter and false accuser by the English House of Commons in 1691.
There is little doubt that Penn's powers of obser- vation caused him to be consulted, and his interest in politics caused him to dabble in matters from which he should have stood aloof; and a conspicuous instance was at the time of Preston's Conspiracy, so called after Sir Richard Graham, President of the Council in James's reign, and created by him Viscount Preston in the peerage of Scotland. For the interesting and pretty well attested details here omitted of this con- spiracy, the reader may consult Macaulay's History. There had been, according to a report found among the papers carried by Preston and his companions, a con- ference between some Tories and Whigs, agreeing that it would be possible to restore James II, if neither he nor Louis XIV came as a conqueror, but that James must accord the English a Protestant administration, with no other privilege for the Catholics than liberty of conscience, and must show a model of this at St. Germain's by preferring the Protestants about him to the Catholics, and must encourage seven or nine Pro- testant lords and gentlemen then in England to come to him, as a standing Council, and that the King of France must allow the English Protestants in that country to have chapels-all of which seems such a so- lution of the state of affairs that we could not blame Penn if he had proposed it. Furthermore, a declara- tion had been suggested for James to issue, viz: that the army brought with him would be sent back as soon as the Dutch were sent away from England. Various
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CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
persons had written letters, which, under disguises, urged James to make a speedy invasion. It is not necessary to traverse Penn's denial of being at any formal conference, or of knowing what was on foot: but his letter without date to Viscount Sidney, as will be seen, means that Preston, in the latter part of De- cember, had a conversation with Penn, and Preston's report in his confession may be relied upon as showing that they canvassed the "state of mind" of various prominent personages, and that Penn-let us suppose not knowing the use to be made of it-expressed the opinion that the Earl of Devonshire, Lord Steward of the Household under William and Mary, and Earl Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain, and a number of others would be glad to see James back under certain condi- tions. It is not clear, but it is possible, that Penn even was the Mr. P. who is down in Preston's memorandum as giving him a commission for Flanders: the next words may have no connection with this, but are "hinder Eng. and D. from joining;" then comes "two vessels of 1501. price for Pennsylvania for 13 or 14 months." With the various letters and some infor- mation about the defence of the coast, Preston and John Ashton with a more innocent companion, Ed- mund Eliot, left London on December 31, 1690, in a fishing smack, hired to take them to France, osten- sibly for smuggling. They were overhauled and cap- tured, and the papers seized. Convicted of high treason, Ashton suffered death, but Lord Preston saved his life by a confession. Viscount Sidney wrote on Jany. 20, 1690-1, to the King that Preston had been tried on the preceding Saturday, and would endeavor to deserve his life at the King's hands, so that Sidney favored suspending the execution, and what Preston could say against Lord Clarendon, the Bishop of Ely, and Mr. Penn was of great importance. Sidney added that neither the Bishop nor Mr. Penn was to be found,
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ENGLAND.
and that Penn was as much in the business as anybody, and that two of the letters were certainly of his writing. So probably on this account, rather than by reason of anything which Fuller had said, had an officer been sent to arrest Penn at George Fox's funeral, which took place on January 16, 1690-1, at Bunhill Fields, London. Making a mistake as to the hour, it is explained, the officer was unsuccessful. Dixon, from mistaking the date of the subsequent proclamation for that of the war- rant, has contradicted Macaulay's statement of this plan to arrest; but it is found in the Quaker biographies of Penn, who himself says in a letter of 4 mo. 14, 1691, to Thomas Lloyd, printed by Janney : "That night, very providentially, I escaped the messenger's hands." Although the Marquess of Carmarthen said on Feb. 3 that Preston was the only witness against Penn, a proclamation, dated Feb. 5, 1690-1, was issued for the capture &ct., as in the proclamation of July 14 preced- ing (both proclamations printed by American Anti- quarian Society), of Francis, late Bishop of Ely, William Penn Esq., and James Grahme Esq., as hav- ing, for procuring an invasion by the French, &ct., held correspondence with Preston. Warrants against them for high treason were recited, as well as their absence from their abodes, and fleeing from justice. Penn had been making preparations to sail in the following April to Pennsylvania with a large number of settlers, and the Secretary of State had appointed a convoy to protect the vessels, but this, in fact everything but hid- ing, was now impossible.
After the discovery of the Preston Conspiracy, King William sailed from Gravesend for Holland on Jany. 18, and was not again in London until March. About Feb. 19, through arrangement made by Anthony Low- ther, Penn's brother-in-law, and, with consent of Queen Mary, allowing freedom from detention, Penn had a secret interview with Viscount Sidney, the Secretary
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CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
of State. Sidney's letter to the King is reprinted by Dixon from Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland. Penn protested loyalty, and that he knew of no plot, and believed in none but what Louis XIV had laid, and of the bottom of which Penn thought that James II knew as little as other people; also Penn said that William had many enemies, and some who came over with him, or soon joined him, were more danger- ous than the Jacobites, among whom, Penn declared, there was no man who had even ordinary ability, that, if William would trust Penn, the latter would tell all he knew that would be for the King's interest to know, otherwise he would very unwillingly leave the king- dom; but that he could not appear as a witness, being unable to take an oath. On King William's return, and Preston's repetition in his presence of the confession, that crowned politician, knowing his precarious situa- tion on the throne, was disinclined to ferret out the dis- affected, and arouse their violent hostility. Two letters of this time from Penn to Henry Sidney, then Viscount Sidney, are printed as being to Lord Romney, the title of Earl of Romney being conferred on Sidney three years later. One, dated 22 A, 90 (April 22), to show to the King, asks permission to live quietly in England or America. In the other letter to Sidney, Penn offers to appear, if he will be believed, but says that he can not come out of retirement, and put himself in the power of his enemies: he denies all knowledge of in- vasions or insurrections or men, money, or arms there- for, or juncto or consult in order thereto, and says that he never met any of those named as conspirators, or prepared measures with anybody for Lord
[Janney queries, Sunderland? but evidently Preston is meant] to carry with him as one sense or judgment, nor did Penn know of his, said Lord's, being sent for any such voyage, and adds: "If I saw him a few days before by his great importunity, as some say, I am
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able to defend myself from the imputations cast upon me, and that with great truth and sincerity, though in rigour, perhaps, it may incur the censure of a misde- meanor, and therefore I have no reason to own it with- out an assurance that no hurt should ensue to me." This letter is undated, but, from the answer, we find that it was written as King William was hurrying to Holland, whither he went in May. Neither Penn's story nor his body for punishment seems afterwards to have been sought. There was a report, which Ma- caulay can not be blamed for accepting, that Penn fled to France. Robert Harley, writing to Sir Edward Har- ley on Sep. 15, says: "William Penn got safe into France last week." This accords with Luttrell's Brief Relation, which, noting events of that month, says "Wm. Penn the quaker is gott off from Shoreham in Sussex and gone for France." It seems, however, that he stayed in London. Otherwise, some notice of his having been at St. Germain would have been taken by officials in the course of the years next following.
We may conclude that there was no proof before King William's officials, at least before those not par- ticularly Penn's friends, to convict him of knowingly aiding James. Had there been, Penn would have been deprived, if not of life, certainly of property, and prob- ably of both. It would have been necessary to make an example of him. There would have been no mercy shown to please such a weak body as the Quakers. His wealth would have added to the means of satisfying the adventurers in William's train; and statecraft, in the interest not only of the new party, but of the empire at large, was demanding the revocation of the grant of Pennsylvania.
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