The material prosperity of Penn's Holy Experiment kept on proving itself over and over again every month of the year.But meantime great events were taking place in England.The period of fifteen years from Penn's return to England in 1684, until his return to Pennsylvania at the close of the year of 1699, was an eventful time in English history.It was long for a proprietor to be away from his province, and Penn would have left a better reputation if he had passed those fifteen years in his colony, for in England during that period he took what most Americans believe to have been the wrong side in the Revolution of 1688.
Penn was closely tied by both interest and friendship to Charles II and the Stuart family.When Charles II died in 1685 and his brother, the Duke of York, ascended the throne as James II, Penn was equally bound to him, because among other things the Duke of York had obtained Penn's release in 1669 from imprisonment for his religious opinions.He became still more bound when one of the first acts of the new King's reign was the release of a great number of people who had been imprisoned for their religion, among them thirteen hundred Quakers.In addition to preaching to the Quakers and protecting them, Penn used his influence with James to secure the return of several political offenders from exile.His friendship with James raised him, indeed, to a position of no little importance at Court.He was constantly consulted by the King, in whose political policy he gradually became more and more involved.
James was a Roman Catholic and soon perfected his plans for making both Church and State a papal appendage and securing for the Crown the right to suspend acts of Parliament.Penn at first protested, but finally supported the King in the belief that he would in the end establish liberty.In his earlier years, however, Penn had written pamphlets arguing strenuously against the same sort of despotic schemes that James was now undertaking;and this contradiction of his former position seriously injured his reputation even among his own people.
Part of the policy of James was to grant many favors to the Quakers and to all other dissenting bodies in England, to release them from prison, to give them perfect freedom of worship, and to remove the test laws which prevented them from holding office.He thus hoped to unite them with the Roman Catholics in extirpating the Church of England and establishing the Papacy in its place.
But the dissenters and nonconformists, though promised relief from sufferings severer than it is possible perhaps now to appreciate, refused almost to a man this tempting bait.Even the Quakers, who had suffered probably more than the others, rejected the offer with indignation and mourned the fatal mistake of their leader Penn.All Protestant England united in condemning him, accused him of being a secret Papist and a Jesuit in disguise, and believed him guilty of acts and intentions of which he was probably entirely innocent.This extreme feeling against Penn is reflected in Macaulay's "History of England," which strongly espouses the Whig side; and in those vivid pages Penn is represented, and very unfairly, as nothing less than a scoundrel.
In spite of the attempts which James made to secure his position, the dissenters, the Church of England, and Penn's own Quakers all joined heart and soul in the Revolution of 1688, which quickly dethroned the King, drove him from England, and placed the Prince of Orange on the throne as William III.Penn was now for many years in a very unfortunate, if not dangerous, position, and was continually suspected of plotting to restore James.For three years he was in hiding to escape arrest or worse, and he largely lost the good will and affection of the Quakers.
Meantime, since his departure from Pennsylvania in the summer of 1684, that province went on increasing in population and in pioneer prosperity.But Penn's quitrents and money from sales of land were far in arrears, and he had been and still was at great expense in starting the colony and in keeping up the plantation and country seat he had established on the Delaware River above Philadelphia.Troublesome political disputes also arose.The Council of eighteen members which he had authorized to act as governor in his absence neglected to send the new laws to him, slighted his letters, and published laws in their own name without mentioning him or the King.These irregularities were much exaggerated by enemies of the Quakers in England.The Council was not a popular body and was frequently at odds with the Assembly.
Penn thought he could improve the government by appointing five commissioners to act as governor instead of the whole Council.
Thomas Lloyd, an excellent Quaker who had been President of the Council and who had done much to allay hard feeling, was fortunately the president of these commissioners.Penn instructed them to act as if he himself were present, and at the next meeting of the Assembly to annul all the laws and reenact only such as seemed proper.This course reminds us of the absolutism of his friend, King James, and, indeed, the date of these instructions (1686) is that when his intimacy with that bigoted monarch reached its highest point.Penn's theory of his power was that the frame or constitution of government he had given the province was a contract; that, the Council and Assembly having violated some of its provisions, it was annulled and he was free, at least for a time, to govern as he pleased.Fortunately his commissioners never attempted to carry out these instructions.
