his correspondent was some other man than Penn. He answered the anonymous letter by a letter also anonymous, which he forwarded to Penn, inviting him to answer, saying, if Penn had written the first letter, he would know where to send his reply. No answer came. There is a third and stronger proof behind. Hunt, as one of the offending Fellows, had to see Penn shortly afterwards at Windsor, where he seems to have shown him the anonymous letter. Penn denied all knowledge of it. The contemporary manuscript at Magdalen College has a note in Hunt's hand-writing, This letter Mr. Penn disowned.'Hunt MS. fo. 45, Magdalen College, MSS.

.

What said Macaulay to these facts? He wrote:

'It has lately been asserted that Penn most certainly did not write this letter. Now the evidence which proves the letter to be his is irresistible. Bailey, to whom the letter was addressed, ascribed it to Penn, and sent an answer to Penn. In a very short time both the letter and the answer appeared in print. Many thousands of copies were circulated. Penn was pointed out to the whole world as the author of the letter; and it is not pretended that he met this public accusation with a public contradiction. Everybody therefore believed, and was perfectly warranted in believing, that he was the author. The letter was repeatedly quoted as his during his own lifetime, not merely in fugitive pamphlets, such as "The History of the Ecclesiastical Commission," published in 1711, but in grave and elaborate books which were meant to descend to posterity. Boyer, in his " History of William the Third," printed immediately after that king's death, and reprinted in 1703, pronounced the letter to be Penn's, and added some severe reflections on the writer. Kennet, in the bulky "History of England" published in 1706—a history which had a large sale and produced a great sensation-adopted the very words of Boyer. When these works appeared, Penn was not only alive, but in the full enjoyment of his faculties. He cannot have been ignorant of the charge brought against him by writers of so much note; and it was not his practice to hold his peace when unjust charges were brought against him even by obscure scribblers. . . . In the year of his death appeared Eachard's huge volume, containing the History of England from the Restoration to the Revolution;

and Eachard, though often differing with Boyer and Kennet, agreed with them in unhesitatingly ascribing the letter to Penn. Such is the evidence on one side. I am not aware that any evidence deserving a serious answer has been produced on the other. (1857.)'

Such is the evidence on one side.'
6

One man'ascribes

the letter to Penn; a second prints' it as Penn's; a third 'quotes' it as Penn's. Now the first man, Bailey,' ascribed' it to Penn for a moment only. The second printed' it only as supposed to be writ' by Penn. The others' quoted' it in ignorance. It is the first time such a rule has ever been laid down in either law or letters, that when a falsehood has been quoted three times it becomes a truth.

It

No evidence on the other side! The letter is not in Penn's hand. Is that evidence nothing? The letter is not signed by Penn. Is that evidence nothing? It is not in Penn's style. Is that evidence nothing? It contains words that Penn never uses. Is that evidence nothing? is denied by Penn. Is that evidence nothing? This denial is made to the Fellows themselves. Is that evidence nothing? The document containing Hunt's memorandum of the denial is preserved at Magdalen College. Is that evidence nothing?

The authority for Macaulay's assertion that Penn 'did not scruple to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly disreputable kind,' is Hough's letter (printed in Wilmot's Life of Hough,' 25), describing a meeting which the Fellows had with Penn.

Macaulay's story of this meeting is a comedy of errors. He is wrong on every point the time, the place, the method, and the motive, of this interview. Macaulay describes the time of meeting as immediately after James left Oxford, while the King was greatly incensed and mortified by his defeat.' This was early in September. The meeting was not really held till five weeks later; October 9, 1687. (Life of Hough, 22.) Macaulay gives the place as Oxford. It was really held at Eton,

near Windsor, where Penn had then a country house (Lawton's Mem. in Penn, Hist. Soc. Mem. iii. p. 11, 218; Life of Hough, 23.) Macaulay described the method of this interview as a visit made by Penn to Hough and other Fellows. The actual method was a deputation from the College to Penn; a deputation of which Hough was the head; a deputation which had to follow Penn to Eton, and to ask his leave to occupy a morning of his time. (Life of Hough, 22-3.) Macaulay describes the motive of the interview as a design of Penn to make the Fellows compromise their course. The actual motive was a strong desire on the part of Hough and other Fellows to procure Penn's powerful mediation and support with James. To this one end they followed him to Eton; and to this one end they begged him to receive them. As their friend, he saw them; as their friend, he wished he had been concerned for them a little sooner; as their friend, he feared he was too late a-field to help them; as their friend, he assured them he had the welfare of their college at heart. Penn detained the Fellows upwards of three hours: read the whole of their papers and petitions: and promised he would try to read the whole of them to James. (Life of Hough, 23-5.)

Yet all these errors as to time, place, method, and motive, stand untouched in the Collected Works!

Macaulay, speaking of this interview (which he supposes Penn to have sought in the interest of James, not the Fellows to have sought in the interest of their College), says that Penn began to hint at a compromise,' and thence proceeds to his charge of simony of a peculiarly disreputable kind.' I quoted Hough's own words, which show that Penn was so completely on their side, that, even for the sake of peace, this great apostle of non-resistance would not hint that they should yield the point. I thank God,' said Hough, he did not so much as offer at any proposal by way of accommodation, which was the thing I most dreaded.' (Life of Hough, 24.)

To this Macaulay answered:
:-

Here again I have been accused of calumniating Penn; and some show of a case has been made out by suppression amounting to falsification. It is asserted that Penn did not "begin to hint at a compromise;" and in proof of this assertion a few words, quoted from the letter in which Hough gives an account of the interview, are printed in italics. These words are, "I thank God he did not offer any proposal by way of accommodation." These words, taken by themselves, undoubtedly seem to prove that Penn did not begin to hint at a compromise. But their effect is very different indeed when they are read in connexion with words which immediately follow, without the intervention of a full stop, but which have been carefully suppressed. The whole sentence runs thus:--I thank God he did not offer any proposal by way of accommodation; only once, upon the mention of the Bishop of Oxford's indisposition, he said, smiling, "If the Bishop of Oxford die, Dr. Hough may be made bishop. What think you of that, gentlemen?"" Can anything be clearer than that the latter part of the sentence limits the general assertion contained in the former part? Everybody knows that only is perpetually used as synonymous with except that. Instances will readily occur to all who are well acquainted with the English Bible, a book from the authority of which there is no appeal when the question is about the force of an English word. We read in the book of Genesis, to go no further, that every living thing was destroyed; and Noah only remained, and they that were with him in the ark; and that Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; only the land of the priests bought he not. The defenders of Penn reason exactly like a commentator who should construe these passages to mean that Noah was drowned in the flood, and that Joseph bought the land of the priests for Pharaoh. (1857.)'

And so the passage stands!

These five charges were contained in the first part of Macaulay's History, volumes i. and ii., and were answered at the time. The second portion of his History' continued the abuse.

Penn, according to Macaulay, was a scandalous Jacobite. He tried to bring a foreign army into England. He told

the King a falsehood, which William probably knew to be a falsehood. He narrowly escaped arrest for conspiracy at the grave of Fox. He told Sydney something very like a lie, and confirmed that lie with something very like an oath. He stole down to the Sussex coast, and thence escaped to France. He exhorted James to make a descent on England with thirty thousand men.

Not one of these seven passages was true; not even colourably true; as I must now proceed to show.

VI. That Penn was 'a' scandalous Jacobite is one of those false charges which have been struck out of the later index, with a view (it is to be supposed) of its being ultimately struck out of the text, in which it now unhappily stands :

'The conduct of Penn was

scandalous. He was a zealous

and busy Jacobite.'-Coll. Works, iii. 261.

That Penn was not a Jacobite at all-that is to say, a man who either shared in James's politics when he was king or strove to bring him back when he had lost his crowncan easily be shown. Penn was the friend of Sydney, Locke, and Somers; and the followers of Monmouth set him down in their private lists as one of those powerful men who might be counted on by them for sympathy and help. The writing of that time is full of evidence that Penn was a Reformer, not a Jacobite.

Hough writes:

'He gave an account in short of his acquaintance with the king; assured us it was not popery, but property, that first began it; that honest people were pleased to call him Papist, he was a dissenting Protestant; that he dissented from Papists in almost all those points wherein we differ from them, and many wherein we and they are agreed.'-Wilmot's Life of Hough, 22.

'Penn laboured to thwart the Jesuitical influence that predominated.'-Diary, June 23, 1688.