Latest / William Penn / 02 - William Penn by George Hodges

Transcript

02 - William Penn by George Hodges · William Penn

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Chapter two of William Penn by George Hodges. This LibriVox
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Richard Vogel
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of Thomas Lowe on the twenty second of April sixteen
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: sixty one, we get another glimpse of William, mister Peeps
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: having risen early on the morning of that day and
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: put on his velvet coat and made himself, as he says,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: as fine as he could, repaired to mister Young's the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: flagmaker in Cornill to view the procession wherein the King
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: should ride through London. There we found Sir w Penn
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and his son, with several others. We had a good
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: room to ourselves, he says, with wine and good cake,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and saw the show very well. The streets were new, graveled,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and the fronts of the houses hung with cars, with
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: ladies looking out of all the windows. And so glorious
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: was the show, with gold and silver, that we were
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: not able to look at it, our eyes at last
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: being so overcome. This was a glory very different from
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that which the lad had seen five or six years
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: before in his room. The world was here presenting its
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: attractions in competition with the other world of the earlier vision.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: The contrast is a symbol of the contention between the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: two ideals into which William was immediately to enter. The
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: King and the Duke of York had looked up as
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: they passed the flagmakers and had recognized the Admiral. He
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: had gone to Ireland upon his release from the tower,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and had there resided in retirement upon an estate which
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: his father had owned before him, thence returning as the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: restoration became more and more a probability. He had secured
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a seat in Parliament, and had been a bearer of
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the welcome message which had finally brought Charles from his
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: exile in Holland to his throne in England. For his
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: part in this pleasant errand he had been knighted and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: made Commissioner of Admiralty and Governor of Kinsel. Thus his
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: ambitions were being happily attained. He had retrieved and improved
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: his fortunes, and had become an associate with persons of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: rank and a favorite with royalty. He had immediately sent
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: his son to Oxford. William had been entered as a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: gentleman commoner of christ Church at the beginning of the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Mickelmas term of sixteen sixty It was clearly the paternal
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: intention that the boy should become a successful man of
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the world and a courtier like his father. Sir William, however,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: had not reflected that while he had been pursuing his
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: career of calculating ambition and seeking the pleasure of princes,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: his son had been living amongst Puritans in a Puritan neighborhood.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Young pen went up to Oxford to find all things
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in confusion. The Puritans had been put out of their places,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and the Churchmen were entering in. It is likely that
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: this of itself displeased the new student, whose sympathies were
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: with the dispossessed. The churchmen, however, brought their cavalier habits
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: with them, and the reaction from the severity which they
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: had just escaped. They did many objectionable things, not only
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: for the pleasure of doing them, but for the added
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: joy of shocking their Puritan neighbors. They amused themselves freely
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: on the Lord's day, patronized games and plays, and they
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: tippled and puffed tobacco, and swore and swaggered in all
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the newest fashions. William was the son of his father
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: in appreciation of pleasant and abundant living, but he was
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: not of a disposition tanter into this wanton and audacious
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: merrymaking a gentle, serious country lad with a Puritan conscience. Moreover,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: at this moment, in the face of any possible temptation,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: William's sober tastes and devout resolutions were strengthened by certain
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: appealing sermons. Here it was at Oxford, the nursery of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: enthusiasms and holy causes, that he received the impulse which
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: determined all his after life. He spent but a scant
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: two years in college, and the work of the lecture
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: rooms must have suffered seriously during that time from the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: contention and confusion of the changes then in progress, so
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: that academically the college could not have greatly profited him.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: The prophet came and the influence of Thomas Lowe. Lowe
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: was a Quaker. The origin of the name Quaker is uncertain.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: It is derived by some from the fact that the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: early preachers of the sat trembled as they spoke. Others
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: deduce it from the trembling which their speech compelled in
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: those who heard it. By either derivation, it indicates the
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: earnest spirit of that strange people. Who in the seventeenth
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: century were annoying and displeasing all their neighbors. George Fox,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the first Quaker, was a cobbler, and the first Quaker
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: dress was the leather coat and breeches, which which he
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: made for himself with his own tools. Thereafter he was
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: independent both of fashions and of tailors. Cobbler, though he was,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and so slenderly educated, that he did not express himself grammatically.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Fox was nevertheless a prophet according to the order of Amos,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the herdsman of Toccoa. He looked out into the England
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of his day with the keenest eyes of any man
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: of the times, and remarked upon what he saw with
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the most honest and candid speech. A man of the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: plain people, like most of the prophets and apostles, the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: offenses which chiefly attracted his attention were such as the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: plain people naturally see. Out of the windows of his
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: cobbler shop, Fox beheld with righteous indignation the extravagant and
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: insincere courtesies of the gentlefolk, and heard their exaggerated phrases
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of compliment. In protest against the unmeaning courtesies, he wore
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: his hat in the presence of no matter whom, taking
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: it off only in time of prayer. In protest against
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: the unmeaning compliments, he addressed no man by any artificial title,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: calling all his neighbors without distinction of persons by their
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Christian names. And for the plural pronoun knew the plural
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of dignity and flattery, he substituted thee and thou. The
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: same literalness appeared in his selection of swear not at
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: all as one of the cardinal commandments, and in his
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: application of it to the oaths of the court and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of the state. The Sermon on the Mount has in
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: all ages been considered difficult to enact in common life.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: But it would have been hard to find any sentence
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: in it which, in the days of Fox and Penn,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: with their interpretation, would have brought upon a conscientious person
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a heavier burden of inconvenience. Not only did it make
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the Quakers guilty of contempt of court and thus initially
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: at fault in all legal business, but it exposed them
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: to a natural suspicion of disloyalty to the government. It
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: was a time of political change, first the Commonwealth, then Charles,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: then James, then William, and every change signified the supremacy
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: of a new idea in religion, Puritan, Anglican, Roman, Catholic
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and Protestant. Every new ruler demanded a new oath of allegiance,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and his plots and conspiracies were multiplied. The oath was
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: required again and again, so that England was like an
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: un ruly school whose master is continually calling upon the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: pupils to declare whether or no they are guilty of
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: this or that offense. The Quakers were forbidden, by their
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: doctrine of the oath to make answer in the form
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: which the state required, and they suffered for this scruple,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: as men have suffered for the maintenance of eternal principles.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: To the social eccentricity of the irremovable hat and the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: singular pronoun, and to the civil eccentricity of the refused oath,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: George Fox and his disciples added a series of protests
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: against the most venerable customs of Christianity. They did away
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: with all the forms and ceremonies of churchmen and of
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Puritan alike. Not even baptism, not even the Lord's Supper remained.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Their service was a silent meeting whose solemn stillness was broken,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: if at all, by the voice of one who was
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: sensibly moved by the spirit of God. They discarded all
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: orders of the ministry. They refused alike, all creeds and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: all confessions, not content with, thus abandoning most that their
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: contemporaries valued. Among the institutions of religion. The Quakers made
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: themselves obtrusively obnoxious. They argued and exhorted in season and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: out of season. They printed endless pages of eager and
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: violent controversy. They went into churches and interrupted services and sermons.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Amongst these various denials, there were two positive assertions. One
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: was the doctrine of the return to primitive Christianity. The
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: other was the doctrine of the unward light. Let us
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: get back, they said, to those lessed centuries, when the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: teaching of the Apostles was remembered and the fellowship of
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the Apostles was faithfully kept, when justin Martyr, an Erranius,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: an Ignacious, and the other Holy Fathers lived, and let
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: us listen to the inner voice which lighteth every man,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and attend to the counsels of that Holy Spirit, whose
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: ministrations did not cease with the departure of the last apostle, God,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: they believed, spoke to them directly and told them what
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: to do. George Fox, in sixteen fifty six had brought
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: this teaching to Oxford, and among the company of Quakers
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: which had thus gathered under the eaves of the university,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Thomas Lowe had become a public friend, where as would
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: commonly be said a minister. When William Penn entered christ
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Church College, Lowe was probably in the town jail. It
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: is at least certain that he was imprisoned there with
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: forty other Quakers sometime in sixteen sixty to Lowe's preaching,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: many of the students listened with attention. It is easy
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to see how his doctrines would appeal to young manhood.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: The fact that they were forbidden would attract some, and
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: that the man who preached thus had suffered for his
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: faith would attract others. Their emphasis upon the sincerity and
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: consistency and word, indeed, would commend them to honest souls,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: while the exaltation of the inward light would move then,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: As in all ages, the idealists, the poets, the enthusiasts
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: among them, William Penn knew what the inward light was.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: He had seen it shining so that it filled all
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the room where he was sitting. Accordingly, he not only
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: went to hear Low speak, but was profoundly impressed by
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: what he heard. If Penn was naturally a religious person
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: by inheritance, perhaps from his mother, he was also naturally
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of a political mind by inheritance from his father. What
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Low said touched both sides of this inheritance. For the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Quakers had already begun to dream of a colony across
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the sea. The Churchmen had such a colony in Virginia,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the Puritans had one in Massachusetts. Somewhere else in that
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: untilled continent, there must be a place for those who
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: in England could expect no peace from either Puritan or Churchmen.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Not only had they planned to have some time a
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: country of their own, but they had already located it.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: They had chosen the Lofe Lands, which lay behind the Jerseys.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: While Low was preaching and Penn was listening, Fox was
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: writing to Josiah Cole, a Quaker who was then in America,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: asking him to confer with the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: This plan Low revealed to his student congregation. It appealed
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: to Penn. He had an instinctive appreciation of large ideas,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and an imagination and confidence which made him eager to
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: undertake their execution. It was in his blood. It was
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the spirit which had carried his father from a lieutenancy
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in the Navy to the position of an honored and
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: influential member of the court. I had an opening of
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: joy as to these parts, he says, meaning Pennsylvania in
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: sixteen sixty one at Oxford. This meeting with Lowe was
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: therefore a crisis in Penn's life. William Penn will always
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: be remembered as a leader among the early Quakers, and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: as the founder of a commonwealth. He first became acquainted
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: with the Quakers and first conceived the idea of founding
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: at Oxford, or assisting to found a commonwealth, by the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: preaching of Thomas Lowe. It is a curious fact that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the spirit of protest will often pass by serious offenses
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: and fasten upon some apparently slight occasion which has rather
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: a symbolical than an actual importance. William Penn, so far
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: as we know, endured the disorders of anti purit and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Oxford without protest. He entered so far into the life
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of the place as to contribute with other students to
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: a series of Latin elogies upon the death of the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Duke of Gloucester, and Anthony Wood tells us in manly
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: sports at times of recreation. It is true that he
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: may have written to his father to take him away.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: For mister Peep's records in his journal under date of
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: January twenty fifth, sixteen sixty two, Sir W. Penn came
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: to me and did break a business to me about
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: removing his son from Oxford to Cambridge to some private college,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: but nothing came of it. William has said, indeed, to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: have absent in himself rather often from the college prayers,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and to join with other students whom the Quaker preaching
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: had affected, in holding prayer meetings in their own rooms.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: But all went fairly well until an order was issued
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: requiring the students, according to the ancient custom, to wear
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: surplices in chapel. Then the young Puritan arose and assisted
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: in a ritual of rebellion. He and his friends fell
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: upon those students who appeared in surplices, and he and
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: they together tore them everywhere over their heads. Not content
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: with thus seizing and rending the obnoxious vestments. They proceeded
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: further to thrust the white gowns into the nearest cesspool,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: into whose depths they poked them with long sticks. This
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: incident ended William's course at college. It is doubtful whether
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: he was expelled or only suspended. He was dismissed and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: never returned. Eight years after chancing to pass through Oxford,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and learning that the Quaker students were still subjected to
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the rigors of academic discipline, he wrote a letter to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the Vice chancellor. He probably expresses the sentiments with which,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: as an undergraduate he had regarded the university authorities. Shall
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the multiplied deppressions which thou continuest to heap upon innocent
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: english People for their religion pass unregarded by the eternal God?
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Dost thou think to escape his fierce wrath and dreadful
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of his poor children.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I tell THEE no better were it for THEE thou
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: hadst never been born, And so on in the controversial
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: dialect of the time, calling the Vice Chancellor a poor
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: mushroom and abusing him generally. Elsewhere in a retrospect, which
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I shall presently quote at length. He refers to his
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: university experiences of my persecution at Oxford, and how the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Lord sustained me in the midst of that hellish darkness
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and debauchery, of my being banished the College, end of
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: chapter two