The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

persons, who, in Penn's time, held the Great Seal, one of

them is sometimes Hyde and sometimes Hide: another is Jefferies,

Jeffries, Jeffereys, and Jeffreys: a third is Somers, Sommers,

and Summers: a fourth is Wright and Wrighte; and a fifth is

Cowper and Cooper. The Quaker's name was spelt in three ways. He,

and his father the Admiral before him, invariably, as far as I

have observed, spelt it Penn; but most people spelt it Pen; and

there were some who adhered to the ancient form, Penne. For

example. William the father is Penne in a letter from Disbrowe to

Thurloe, dated on the 7th of December, 1654; and William the son

is Penne in a newsletter of the 22nd of September, 1688, printed

in the Ellis Correspondence. In Richard Ward's Life and Letters

of Henry More, printed in 1710, the name of the Quaker will be

found spelt in all the three ways, Penn in the index, Pen in page

197, and Penne in page 311. The name is Penne in the Commission

which the Admiral carried out with him on his expedition to the

West Indies. Burchett, who became Secretary to the Admiralty soon

after the Revolution, and remained in office long after the

accession of the House of Hannover, always, in his Naval History,

wrote the name Penne. Surely it cannot be thought strange that an

old-fashioned spelling, in which the Secretary of the Admiralty

persisted so late as 1720, should have been used at the office of

the Secretary of State in 1686. I am quite confident that, if the

letter which we are considering had been of a different kind, if

Mr. Penne had been informed that, in consequence of his earnest

intercession, the King had been graciously pleased to grant a

free pardon to the Taunton girls, and if I had attempted to

deprive the Quaker of the credit of that intercession on the

ground that his name was not Penne, the very persons who now

complain so bitterly that I am unjust to his memory would have

complained quite as bitterly, and, I must say, with much more

reason.


I think myself, therefore perfectly justified in considering the

names, Penn and Penne, as the same. To which, then, of the two

persons who bore that name George or William, is it probable that

the letter of the Secretary of State was addressed?


George was evidently an adventurer of a very low class. All that

we learn about him from the papers of the Pinney family is that

he was employed in the purchase of a pardon for the younger son

of a dissenting minister. The whole sum which appears to have

passed through George's hands on this occasion was sixty-five

pounds. His commission on the transaction must therefore have

been small. The only other information which we have about him,

is that he, some time later, applied to the government for a

favour which was very far from being an honour. In England the

Groom Porter of the Palace had a jurisdiction over games of

chance, and made some very dirty gain by issuing lottery tickets

and licensing hazard tables. George appears to have petitioned

for a similar privilege in the American colonies.


William Penn was, during the reign of James the Second, the most

active and powerful solicitor about the Court. I will quote the

words of his admirer Crose. "Quum autem Pennus tanta gratia

plurinum apud regem valeret, et per id perplures sibi amicos

acquireret, illum omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua notitia erant

conjuncti, quoties aliquid a rege postulandum agendumve apud

regem esset, adire, ambire, orare, ut eos apud regem adjuvaret."

He was overwhelmed by business of this kind, "obrutus

negotiationibus curationibusque." His house and the approaches to

it were every day blocked up by crowds of persons who came to

request his good offices; "domus ac vestibula quotidie referta

clientium et suppliccantium." From the Fountainhall papers it

appears that his influence was felt even in the highlands of

Scotland. We learn from himself that, at this time, he was always

toiling for others, that he was a daily suitor at Whitehall, and

that, if he had chosen to sell his influence, he could, in little

more than three, years, have put twenty thousand pounds into his

pocket, and obtained a hundred thousand more for the improvement

of the colony of which he was proprietor.


Such was the position of these two men. Which of them, then, was

the more likely to be employed in the matter to which

Sunderland's letter related? Was it George or William, an agent

of the lowest or of the highest class? The persons interested

were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace. where

George would hardly have been admitted into an outer room, but

where William was every day in the presence chamber and was

frequently called into the closet. The greatest nobles in the

kingdom were zealous and active in the cause of their fair

friends, nobles with whom William lived in habits of familiar

intercourse, but who would hardly have thought George fit company

for their grooms. The sum in question was seven thousand pounds,

a sum not large when compared with the masses of wealth with

which William had constantly to deal, but more than a hundred

times as large as the only ransom which is known to have passed

through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice

to raise a strong presumption that Sunderland's letter was

addressed to William, and not to George: but there is a still

stronger argument behind.


It is most important to observe that the person to whom this

letter was addressed was not the first person whom the Maids of

Honour had requested to act for them. They applied to him because

another person to whom they had previously applied, had, after

some correspondence, declined the office. From their first

application we learn with certainty what sort of person they

wished to employ. If their first application had been made to

some obscure pettifogger or needy gambler, we should be warranted

in believing that the Penne to whom their second application was

made was George. If, on the other hand, their first application

was made to a gentleman of the highest consideration, we can

hardly be wrong in saying that the Penne to whom their second

application was made must have been William. To whom, then, was

their first application made? It was to Sir Francis Warre of

Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parliament. The letters

are still extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke,

not a man very likely to have corresponded with George Penne,

pressed Sir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of

those letters is dated about three weeks before Sunderland's

letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir Francis that the town

clerk of Bridgewater, whose name, I may remark in passing, is

spelt sometimes Bird and sometimes Birde, had offered his

services, but that those services had been declined. It is clear,

therefore, that the Maids of Honour were desirous to have an

agent of high station and character. And they were right. For the

sum which they demanded was so large that no ordinary jobber

could safely be entrusted with the care of their interests.


As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the

negotiation, it became necessary for the Maids of Honour and

their advisers to choose somebody who might supply his place; and

they chose Penne. Which of the two Pennes, then, must have been

their choice, George, a petty broker to whom a percentage on

sixty-five pounds was an object, and whose highest ambition was

to derive an infamous livelihood from cards and dice, or William,

not inferior in social position to any commoner in the kingdom?

Is it possible to believe that the ladies, who, in January,

employed the Duke of Somerset to procure for them an agent in the

first rank of the English gentry, and who did not think an

attorney, though occupying a respectable post in a respectable

corporation, good enough for their purpose, would, in February,

have resolved to trust everything to a fellow who was as much

below Bird as Bird was below Warre?


But, it is said, Sunderland's letter is dry and distant; and he

never would have written in such a style to William Penn with

whom he was on friendly terms. Can it be necessary for me to

reply that the official communications which a Minister of State

makes to his dearest friends and nearest relations are as cold

and formal as those which he makes to strangers? Will it be

contended that the General Wellesley to whom the Marquis

Wellesley, when Governor of India, addressed so many letters

beginning with "Sir," and ending with "I have the honour to be

your obedient servant,'' cannot possibly have been his Lordship's

brother Arthur?


But, it is said, Oldmixon tells a different story. According to

him, a Popish lawyer named Brent, and a subordinate jobber, named

Crane, were the agents in the matter of the Taunton girls. Now it

is notorious that of all our historians Oldmixon is the least

trustworthy. His most positive assertion would be of no value

when opposed to such evidence as is furnished by Sunderland's

letter, But Oldmixon asserts nothing positively. Not only does he

not assert positively that Brent and Crane acted for the Maids of

Honour; but he does not even assert positively that the Maids of

Honour were at all concerned. He goes no further than "It was

said," and "It was reported." It is plain, therefore, that he was

very imperfectly informed. I do not think it impossible, however,

that there may have been some foundation for the rumour which he

mentions. We have seen that one busy lawyer, named Bird,

volunteered to look after the interest of the Maids of Honour,

and that they were forced to tell him that they did not want his

services. Other persons, and among them the two whom Oldmixon

names, may have tried to thrust themselves into so lucrative a

job, and may, by pretending to interest at Court, have succeeded

in obtaining a little money from terrified families. But nothing

can be more clear than that the authorised agent of the Maids of

Honour was the Mr. Penne, to whom the Secretary of State wrote;

and I firmly believe that Mr. Penne to have been William the

Quaker


If it be said that it is incredible that so good a man would have

been concerned in so bad an affair, I can only answer that this

affair was very far indeed from being the worst in which he was

concerned.


For those reasons I leave the text, and shall leave it exactly as

it originally stood. (1857.)


462 Burnet, i. 646, and