Philadelphia (Repplier)/Chapter 1
IT is hard for us who live in an age of careless and cheerful tolerance to understand the precise inconveniences attending religious persecution. The lamentable decline of church discipline leaves us powerless to interfere with the erroneous convictions of our neighbours, and our own polite indifference permits them to cherish their delusions unassailed. We are so full of courteous phrases, pulpit bowing to pulpit, and "Après vous, Monsieur," murmured all along the line, that it is like stepping into another world, into a bleak, clear, atmosphere of sincere ungraciousness, when we hear what old Robert Burton—a man of infinite good temper—has to say anent the Anabaptists; or when we listen to the vigorous anathemas launched by Sydney Smith against the Methodists, or even when we open the diary of that fine old English gentleman, John Evelyn, and read his opinion of Quakers. On the eighth of July, 1656, he visits some of these innocent offenders in prison; and, far from expressing any sympathy for their sufferings, or any admiration for their fortitude; he writes them coldly down a "fanatic sect of dangerous principles, who show no respect to any man, magistrate or other, and seem a melancholy, proud sort of people, and exceedingly ignorant."
One year before this prison visit, little William Penn, a boy of eleven, enjoyed his first ghostly "manifestation." There was "an external glory in the room," and the voice of the Lord rang in his ears and in his heart, summoning him to the life of the spirit, and to the relinquishment of earthly vanities. The visionary child, with his brilliant eyes, his fluent speech, his moods of strange abstraction, must have been a sore trial to his father, that hearty sailor, Sir William Penn, who, being himself singularly unvexed by nice distinctions of creed, failed, at any time, to understand what his troublesome son was worrying about. Vice-Admiral of England's navy at thirty-one, Sir William fought as valiantly and as blithely for Cromwell as for Charles. England's foes were his foes, and England's ruler was his ruler, and England's faith was his faith; and it was certainly not a sailor's business to inquire too closely into these things, nor to meddle with church or state. The friend and associate of Mr. Samuel Pepys,—who at heart cordially detested him,—his careless gallantry to Mrs. Pepys aroused the jealousy of her neglectful and exacting husband. It was at Penn's house that Mr. Pepys supped so gayly one Sunday night—the Vice-Admiral's brother, "a traveller and a merry man," being of the party—that the next morning found the wretched diarist sick and befuddled, with an aching head, and a spirit steeped in woe. Then came along Sir William, in nowise the worse for his potations, and, pitying the civilian's miserable plight, advised him jovially to drink "two draughts of sack," as a sure remedy for his disorder,—which counsel Mr. Pepys promptly followed, and found the physic marvellously efficacious.
Did little William peep in upon this scandalous supper party, and listen to the merry uncle's tales, made all the merrier by his mellow mood? The boy was no youthful prig, for all his visions and manifestations. He was straight, and tall, and strong, loved athletic sports, had a fluctuating taste for cheerful company, and showed no lack of discernment anent things that were of the earth earthy. Between him and his father there existed a cordial understanding until at Oxford he began to attend the preaching of Thomas Fox, instead of going duly to the college service. This might have been passed over, but the immediate results were of a character which demanded notice. Young Penn not only refused to wear his academic gown,—as savouring vaguely of prelacy,—but he apparently refused to permit other students to wear theirs in peace; and his attitude was so determined and annoying—the gowns being unpopular at best—that he was sent down from college for nonconformity in 1661.
Sir William, angry, distressed, and hopelessly bewildered by what seemed to him much ado about nothing, decided, like a wise old worldling, not to make a martyr of his son by showing any grave displeasure, but to despatch him at once to France, where he might be trusted to quickly forget this unimaginable folly. To Paris accordingly went the youthful Penn, was presented at the court of Louis XIV., enjoyed the new experience amazingly, and made a brave, boyish figure amid those brilliant scenes. In fact, when he returned to England, he was what Mr. Pepys termed a "modish person"; and we note in the diary a ring of amusing but very human displeasure at the admiration this "compleat young gentleman" never failed to excite. "Comes Mr. Penn to visit me," writes the unpacified Pepys. "I perceive something of learning he hath got; but a great deal, if not too much, of the vanity of the French garb, and affected manner of speech and gait."
The cure being thus happily effected, Penn began to enjoy life in earnest, and found London very little behind Paris in affording the means of entertainment. The terrible advent of the Plague oppressed him, indeed, not unnaturally, with "a deep sense of the vanity of the world"; but he shook off this heavy-heartedness in Ireland, whither his father had sent him to look after the family estates, and where we find him presently fighting with carnal weapons—and in the gayest of spirits—to put down one of those periodical uprisings which for many centuries have diversified the monotony of Irish life. So well did this brief campaign please him, that he decided with swift incontinence to adopt the profession of arms,
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Penn's Crest
which decision was, strangely enough, combated by the sailor father, who had destined his clever son for the civil service, and who was shrewd enough to know in what field a man's fortunes might be most rapidly advanced. It was during the warlike episode of 1666 that the charming picture was painted which now seems so utterly at variance with Penn's career, and which, for that very reason perhaps, has been prized, and cherished, and duplicated, until it is pleasantly familiar to us all. The original still hangs, it is said, on the walls of that stately home which John Penn the younger built for himself on the Isle of Portland, and which is now the seat of J. Merrick Head, Esq.; but the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia possesses an excellent copy, and there is another at Tempsford Hall in Bedfordshire; while Schoff's admirable engraving has found its way into hundreds of English and American homes. The half-length portrait in steel breastplate and lace cravat, with dark hair flowing loosely over the mail-clad shoulders, looks more like a cavalier than a Quaker. The brilliant eyes have the splendid confidence of youth; a lurking smile is lost in the flexible corners of the mouth. Altogether a gay and gallant young gentleman, and not unlike the portrait of the gay and gallant Admiral his father, which, painted by Sir Peter Lely, ruffles it in conscious pride on the walls of Greenwich Hospital.
At the very time, however, that the world's victory seemed securely won, it was on the eve of discomfiture. The ubiquitous and untiring Fox was preaching now in Ireland, and Penn's pietism, which had been either lulled to sleep by pleasure, or forgotten in the tumult of hard work, awoke again to vehement life under the controlling influence of a religion which satisfied all the spiritual requirements of his nature. The doctrine of renunciation, the yielding up of worldly distinctions,—this had always seemed to him God's word spoken to the soul; and once more, and for the last time, he turned resolutely away from a life filled to the brim with honourable ambitions and rewards. In a very few weeks we find him arrested for "riot and tumultuous assembling,"—i.e., listening peaceably to Quaker sermons; and—having not yet reached that point of sanctity when persecution becomes a pleasure—we find him also writing indignant letters to Lord Orrery, son of the Lord-Lieutenant, demanding an immediate release from jail. Six months later, Mr. Pepys records in his journal, this time with malicious satisfaction,—there is always something which does not displease us in the misfortunes of our friends,—that "Mr. Penn, who has lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some such melancholy thing."
Sir William, exasperated beyond the limits of endurance, argued and entreated in vain. He was even then willing to temporize with his unmanageable son, being at heart sincerely indifferent as to what that son believed, provided he would behave like other people, which was precisely what the ardent young convert declined to do. A compromise of the broadest kind was finally proposed. Sir William declared himself ready to close his eyes to all eccentricities—they were simply eccentricities to him—if Penn in return would consent to uncover to the King, to the Duke of York, and to himself. Penn stanchly refused, and left his father's roof for the troubled life of a nonconformist preacher in London. Mrs. Oliphant, who wrote an elaborate sketch of Philadelphia's Founder, marked by her usual anxious sense of justice, and by more than her usual lack of sympathy, intimated that, beyond some gentle ridicule, the Quakers suffered little persecution from English laws. But if any of us were called upon to endure as much to-day, I doubt not we should think it heavy enough. The Quakers were not burned, that is true, stakes and fagots being out of vogue since Mary's reign; but fines and imprisonment grow wearisome to the spirit, and so Penn probably thought when he found himself committed to the Tower for the unlicensed publication of "Sandy Foundations Shaken."
The book made a profound impression upon many minds. Mrs. Pepys read it aloud to Mr. Pepys, who grows strangely serious in discussing it. It is well written, he thinks, so very well written that he can hardly understand how the young Penn came to write it; yet it is a "serious sort of book, and not fit for everybody to read,"—Mr. Pepys being of Lord Chesterfield's opinion concerning those who disturb the serene convictions of society. The authorities considered it eminently unfit for everybody, or for anybody, to read; and its author, still in the Tower, defended his principles in "No Cross, no Crown," and in "Innocency with her Open Face," a charming title that sounds as though it had come straight from the "Faerie Queene."
The good offices of the Duke of York finally procured Penn's release from prison, and Sir William, a perfect model of long-suffering paternity, took him back into favour, his contempt for Quakerism being somewhat modified by the knowledge that it had in no wise weakened his son's natural aptitude for business. So he paid, with what serenity he could muster, the fines that followed on each new indiscretion, kept him in charge of the Irish estates, and bequeathed to him, when he died, his blessing, an annual income of sixteen hundred pounds, and a claim of sixteen thousand pounds against the crown, to which happy, though by no means unusual circumstance, we owe our Quaker town. To wring money, especially a just debt, from the Merry Monarch was something that bordered closely on the impossible. Penn realized this as fully as his father had realized it before him; and, pondering the matter over, there came to him the first faint outlines of a plan which, if carried out, might mean not wealth alone, but such distinction as his new faith permitted him to enjoy, and, above all, a peaceful haven from the petty persecutions which assailed him. For more and more, as his convictions grew and strengthened, had he come into sharp conflict with the unyielding majesty of the law, and he was not fitted by nature for the passive rôle of sanctity. His father's blood ran hotly in his veins, and, far from suffering in silence, he lifted up his voice with remarkable fluency, and a lamentable lack of meekness, in behalf of the holy cause. A young man who would call the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford a "poor mushroom," must have studied but lamely the part of consistent and dutiful non-resistance.
So the King was entreated to pay the Old World debt with a grant of New World land, and was by no means ready to consent to even this kingly compromise. Much pleading and long waiting well-nigh wore out the pleader's patience, before Charles, urged by the friendly Duke of York, set his royal seal in 1680 to the parchment which made William Penn governor and proprietor of a province whose boundaries were to be disputed for many years to come. The land was vested in Penn in fee simple, subject to the quit-rent of two beaver skins, and a fifth part of its gold and silver ore,—at which we Pennsylvanians smile to-day, thinking of those other mines which lay with their untold wealth beneath the fertile soil. The governor was invested by the charter with executive and legislative power, subject to the control of the Privy Council, and to the "advice and consent of the freemen of the province," who were to help make the laws before they reverenced and obeyed them. Sylvania was the pretty name chosen for the forest-covered district, to which appellation Charles prefixed the Penn, and was so pleased with his royal jest that he refused to relinquish it. So "Pennsilvania," as it is spelled in the original charter, like Baltimore, enshrines its founder's memory, and affords a welcome relief from the perpetual "New,"—New York, New England, New Jersey, New Orleans,—which our unimaginative ancestors were never weary of repeating with monotonous loyalty to their lost homes.
Matters having been brought to this successful issue, Penn applied himself immediately to a threefold task. He despatched his cousin William Markham, an officer in the King's navy, as deputy governor, to the province, to inspect its condition, to report upon its possibilities, to choose a site for "a fair city," and above all to assure
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the Germans, Swedes, and English already settled along the Delaware that there should be no infringement upon their rights and privileges. The young Proprietor next drew up his first prospectus, addressed to the Free Society of Traders, in which he was exceedingly explicit and businesslike concerning the cost of the trip, the buying and renting of land, the chances offered to agricultural and mechanical labour; only permitting himself a few words of gentle allurement when describing the country he had never seen,—a country, he said, teeming with fish and game, and "six hundred miles nearer the sun than England," which truth probably impressed itself forcibly upon the colonists' minds when their first July came around. The result of this excellent advertising was the almost immediate sale of five hundred and sixty-five thousand acres of land, in lots of from two hundred and fifty to twenty thousand acres.
A still more congenial occupation to the long-harassed and persecuted Quaker was the framing of a constitution, of a code of laws which should temper justice with mercy, and restrain ill-doing, while it permitted the widest possible freedom to every citizen. In this labour of love Penn was nobly assisted by Algernon Sidney, and, between them, they produced those statutes which Montesquieu has so infelicitously compared to the laws of Lycurgus, but which in truth were far more distinguished by leniency than by Spartan rigour. At a time when every convicted thief was promptly hanged in England, Penn found no crime save murder to warrant the death sentence. The clauses which punished profane swearing, intemperance, and card playing; and which strictly forbade the "drinking of healths," "stage plays,"—of which there were none,—"masks and revels," and all "evil sports and games,"—even the innocent old games of May-day, were added to the original code by the first Assembly, which met to represent the "freemen of the province" in 1682. A rather unruly Assembly this, and as troublesome as freemen and their representatives were ever wont to be. It marred Penn's beloved constitution with a number of rigid little rules and regulations to promote
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Penn's Seal
sanctity, or the pretence of sanctity, before it permitted his statutes to pass into the "Great Law." Yet even in this altered form he was so strenuously attached to it that, as soon as the first schoolhouses were built in Philadelphia, he ordered it should be read aloud to all the boys and girls every scholastic year.
In one respect alone the code remained unchanged. There was to be tolerance in the new colony for every form of Christian belief; "freedom," as Gabriel Thomas aptly phrased it, "for all persuasions in a sober and civil way." This tolerance was so far in advance of its generation, that it awoke surprise and consternation rather than universal delight. The New World had been as ready as the Old to lay a chastening hand upon every unsanctioned and unwelcome creed, and in more than one instance the colonists had thoroughly enjoyed dispensing to others the hard fare they had received at home. Only Lord Baltimore and Roger Williams, strangely indifferent to the blessed privilege of "doing as you have been done by," proclaimed in Maryland and Rhode Island the absolute liberty granted to every subject of the King to worship God as he or she thought right. Quaker, Baptist, and Roman Catholic stood side by side, the pioneers of religious freedom in America.
To Penn, at least, it all seemed so natural, so reasonable, and so right. He was but thirty-six when the King signed that memorable parchment deed, and his heart beat high with hope as the peaceful city of his dreams shaped itself slowly into a realized ambition. He had married a wife of his own faith, the daughter of Sir William Springett of Brayle Place, Ringmere, Sussex. She had a charming Italian name, Gulielma Maria, a beautiful face, and a pious disposition. She bore him children, children who were still too young to bring sorrow and heartbreak in their train. A man in his early prime, with superb health, an ample fortune, an honourable career, and, above and beyond all, a mission—a mission in which he firmly believed, and for which he ardently desired success—what wonder that Penn felt an exultant "uplifting of the spirit" when he looked westward over the great grey seas to the land of promise, to the visionary city of peace!