serve; it was the actual fleet; but only called and paid in time of war.

In 1639, when the future Admiral was eighteen years and six months old, the Dutch acquired, by two great victories over Spain, a perfect command of the Narrow Seas. Tromp rode within sight of Dover cliffs, and Charles was suddenly smitten with the want of money, ships, and men. The money was refused him; but he found no difficulty in procuring ships and men. The craft in which William Penn was serving as a skipper seems to have been hired by the crown; and thus a lad of twenty passed into the public service with lieutenant's rank. Even now he would not marry; and his rosy Margaret could wait. Knowing his duty as few men know it, he was soon employed, and soon rewarded for success. tain. A few months later, fortune still going with him, he received a regular commission in the King's service, with the promise of the first ship worthy of his fame; and having got his commission in his pocket, he ran over to Rotterdam and claimed his bride.

At twenty-one he was a cap

From that day forward Penn was always rising. When on shore he lived with his young wife in the naval quarter, near the Tower. His frank and jovial ways were highly relished. He had seen the world; he sang a stave; he loved a prank and jest; and drank his wine with any salt alive. Dutch Peg,' with more wit than Penn himself,' says Pepys, was jeered at first, until her friends discovered that both she and Captain Penn were folks to rise.

A first step for the young captain of the royal

The

navy was to find employment for his talent.
great dispute of King and Commons as to which
should command the marine had just been settled
(1643) by the appointment of Warwick, in opposition
to the will of Charles, to the office of Lord High
Admiral. A part of the fleet, stationed in the Irish
seas, adhered to the royal cause under the command
of Sir John Pennington, whom the King had vainly
tried to make Lord Admiral; but the number of his
vessels was not formidable even at first, and capture
and desertion soon reduced them to such a state of
weakness as to prevent their being troublesome to
the Parliamentary chiefs.

One of Pennington's captured ships was the Fellowship, Captain Burley, cut out in Milford Haven; a vessel of twenty-eight guns; the third in size and weight then serving in the Irish seas. This ship was given to Captain Penn, who received his orders to sail in the service of his country; and though his wife Margaret was then in a critical state, expecting to be confined, he went on board. At six o'clock in the morning, all being ready, he shipped his anchor and dropped down the Thames. But he was suddenly recalled to his house on Tower Hill. The Fellowship was detained in the river three weeks, and during these three weeks the Founder of Pennsylvania was born into the world.

The day of his birth was Monday, October the fourteenth, 1644.

9

CHAPTER II.

SEA-GENERAL PENN (1644-1655).

AFTER Penn of Penn, and Penn of Penn's Lodge, the boy was christened William. Round in face, with soft blue eyes and curling hair, the boy was 'a love,' not only in his mother's eyes, but in his father's heart. Captain Penn had now a son to fight for; and as soon as Peg was fit to be left, her husband joined his ship, and after visiting his admiral in the Downs, pushed on to Portsmouth, where he took Lord Broghill and his company on board. With Broghill Captain Penn formed a friendship which was never broken till his death, and which descended to his son. On landing Broghill at Kinsale, Penn put to sea, and cruised about the opening of St. George's Channel, from Milford Haven to the Cove of Cork.

In this service he remained some years; the ablest, if not the boldest, cruiser in that section of the Commonwealth fleet. The prizes which he seized were sometimes rich; and he was able to remove his wife and child from the close atmosphere of Tower Hill to the lawns and gardens of a country

house. For some brief time he hired a place at Wanstead, in Essex, to which he ran on leave. A daughter Margaret, and a son Richard, were in season added to the nursery in which William broke his toys; heirs not only to their father's gains, but the fortune made in foreign lands by Uncle George.'

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The first great grief which fell upon the Wanstead circle came as news from San Lucar in Spain. An English factor living in a Spanish port, George Penn was watched with jealous eyes by native priests and monks, who had, unluckily, access to his house as the confessors of his wife, and of the sisters of his wife. These women were not only Catholics in faith, but subjects of Philip the Fourth. Now George was a prudent man; a factor who kept his shop, and held his tongue; so that malice could find no flaw in him, even though it had three or four female confessions every week to work upon. But as he grew in wealth, these priests grew angry at his blameless life. How could a heretic be a blameless man? Was he ever seen at mass? Was he known to confess his sins? Did he honour the Spanish saints? Spies were set upon him; his wife was questioned; his wife's sisters were examined; and when nothing could be found against him that would justify the civil power in dealing with his case, they got from the Holy Office in Seville a secret warrant for his arrest.

Officers came down from Seville to San Lucar, broke into his house, anathematized him, seized his papers and books, impounded his goods, his plate, his jewels, his furniture, his horses, and his slaves.

They seized the things in his house and magazines, as well as those on board his ships in the port. Having got his person and his goods, they separated him from his wife, and then with holy incantations, cast him out, body and soul, from the Church of Christ, and the society of men.

Nothing escaped the rapacity of these brigands; from the wine in his cellar, to the nail in his wall. The property they seized was worth twelve thousand pounds. His wife was carried off he knew not whither; he himself was dragged to Seville, where he was cast into a dungeon, only eight feet square, and dark as the grave. In this living tomb he was left with a loaf of bread and a jug of water. For seven days no one came near him; and then the jailor brought him another loaf, another jug of water, and disappeared. No one was allowed to visit him in his cell, no letter or message was suffered to be sent out. He vanished from the world as completely as if the earth had opened in the night and sucked him in.

At the end of the first month of his confinement there was a break in the monotony of his life. The masked familiars of the Holy Office came into his cell, took him by the arms, stript him naked, tied him fast to the iron bars of his dungeon door, and one of them, armed with a whip of knotted cords, dealt out fifty lashes on his back. Each month this flogging was repeated, the new stripes crossing and tearing up the former wounds until his body was one festering sore. And all this time he was unable to learn the name of his accuser and the nature