THE EARLY LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3129, 8 July 1881, Page 4

THE EARLY LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

This eminent and estimable man, despite the mistaken accusations too hastily cast against him by Macaulay, deserves high honour among the founders of the English American Republic and the moral reformers of society in Europe. He was the son of Admiral Sir William Perm, whose distinguished naval services and zeal for the Stuart monarchy had won him the favour of Charles 11. and his brother James, with lucrative offices and Irish estates. A brilliant worldly prospect had therefore been opened to young Perm ; but he rejected it without hesitation, disdained every temptation of pleasure, gaiety, or advancement at the profligate Court of "the Restoration, and braved at once the anger of his parents, the King's express disapproval, and the contempt or dislike of his powerful acquaintance. William Perm had freely marie these sacrifices to an earnest and impassioned love of those ideas of a Divine humanity embodied in Jesus Christ, which for him were associated with Q.uaker doctrines and customs. He had first listened to Quaker preaching while yet a student of Christ Church College, Oxford ; and the serious impressions thus made upon him could not bo effaced by the example of coarse and reckless dissapation then in fashion. After two years of travel and study in France, Switzerland, and Italy, he attended his father and the Duke of York, in 1665, on board the flagship of the English fleet contending with the Dutch in the North Sea. He was next attached to the Viceregal Court of the Duke of Ormonde in Dublin, and joined as a volunteeer with Lord Arran in suppressing a revolt or mutiny of troops at Carrickfergus. Taking military rank as ensign of horse, the young man for a time seemed to have got rid of his Quaker scruples ; and, while free from the vices and follies, displayed the gallant accomplishments of his age. He undertook the management of his father's lands nt Sbangarry Castle, in the county of Cork, and obtained from the Crown a valuable office, the Clerkship of the Cheque at the port of Kinsale. But having, as it were by accident, met again at Cork with the same Quaker preacher he had heard at Oxford, William Perm's religious sensibilities were revived to enthusiastic fervour. _ Harsh treatment, if not from his own family, yet from other persons claiming authority over him, with the indignation and sympathy roused by still worse prosecution of his fellow-believers, soon confirmed in his mind that zeal which covets the martyr's crown as wed as cross. He was arrested and imprisoned, first at Cork, and a few months afterwards in London, for taking part in forbidden religious meetings • and he began writing pamphlets of theological controversy, which dealt too rudely with the clergy, the creed, and the ritual of the Established Church.—Cassel's History of the United States.