PENN 



PENNATULA 



29 



take the oath of allegiance, he was sent to Newgate 

 for six months. Here he wrote four treatises ; one 

 of them, entitled The Great Cause of Liberty of Con- 

 science, is an admirable defence of the doctrine of 

 toleration. After regaining his liberty he visited 

 Holland and Germany for the advancement of 

 Quakerism. The Princess- Palatine Elizabeth, the 

 granddaughter of James I., showed him particular 

 favour. On his return he married, in the t>eginning 

 of 1672, Gulielma Maria Springett, daughter of Sir 

 William Springett, and for some years thereafter 

 continued to propagate, by preaching and writing, 

 tin- doctrines of his sect. 



Circumstances having turned his attention to the 

 New World, he in 1681 obtained from the crown, 

 iti lien of his monetary claim upon it, a grant of 

 territory in North America. Penn wanted to call 

 it Sylvania, on account of its forests, but the king 

 (Charles II.) insisted on the prefix Penn in honour 

 of his father. His great desire was to establish a 

 home for his co-religionists in the distant West, 

 where they might preach and practise their con- 

 victions in unmolested peace. Penn, with several 

 friends, sailed for the Delaware in September 1682, 

 was well received by the settlers, and in October 

 held his famous interview with the Indian tribes, 

 under a large elm-tree at Shackamaxon, afterwards 

 Kensington, and now a part of Philadelphia. He 

 planned and named the city of Philadelphia, and 

 for two years governed the colony wisely and 

 well, but on strictly Puritan principles. Not only 

 Quaker*, but persecuted members of other religious 

 sects sought refuge in his new colony, where from 

 the first the principle of toleration was established 

 by law. 



Towards the end of the reign of Charles II. Penn 

 returned to England to exert himself in favour of 

 his persecuted brethren at home. His influence 

 with James II. an old friend of his father's was 

 so great that many people have never felt quite 

 s;iti-iicd about the nature of their relations. The 

 suspicion, however, that Penn allowed himself 

 to be used as a tool by the court is not justified 

 by any known facts, and Macaulay who with an 

 ungracious animosity has urged the view of his 

 complicity in some of the disgraceful incidents that 

 followed Monmouth's rebellion has been convicted 

 of haste and inaccuracy in several important par- 

 ticulars. At anyrate, his exertions in favour of the 

 Quakers were so far successful that in 1686 a pro- 

 clamation was issued to release all persons im- 

 prisoned on account of their religions opinions, and 

 more than 1200 Quakers were set free. In the April 

 following James issued an edict for the repeal of all 

 religious tests and penalties, but the mass of Non- 

 conformists mistrusted his sincerity, and refused to 

 avail themselves of it. After the accession of the 

 Prince of Orange as William III. Penn was twice 

 aeeti-ied of treason, and of corresponding with the 

 exiled monarch, but was acquitted. In 1690 he 

 was charged with conspiracy, but was not arrested. 

 Nevertheless, in the following year, the charge was 

 renewed. Nothing appears to have been done for 

 some time, but Penn at last, through the kindly 

 nlli<-"* of his friends, Locke, Tillotson, and others, 

 had the matter thoroughly investigated, ami he 

 was finally and honourably acquitted in 1693. In 

 1692 he hail been deprived of his government, but 

 it was restored to him in 1694. In the latter year 

 his wife died, and Penn published a memoir testify- 

 ing to her great virtues ; but in less than two years 

 he married again, his second wife being Hannah 

 Callowhill. of Bristol, a Quaker lady. In 1699 he 

 paid a second visit to the New World, where 

 Pennsylvania required his presence to restore peace 

 and order after the arbitrary behaviour of his 

 deputy. His stay, which lasted two years, was 

 marked by many useful measure*, and by efforts to 



ameliorate the condition of both the Indians and 

 Negroes. He departed for England towards the 

 end of 1701, leaving the management of his affairs 

 to an agent named Ford, whose villainy virtually 

 mined Penn. "SVhen the rogue died he left false 

 claims against his master, which Penn refused to 

 pay, allowing himself to be thrown into the 

 Fleet in 1708. His friends afterwards procured his 

 release, but not till his constitution was fatally 

 impaired; for the last five years of his life hi's 

 memory and understanding were greatly weakened. 

 He died at Ruscombe, in Berkshire, July 30, 1718. 

 The proprietary claims of his descendants were 

 bought up by a pension of 4000, which in 1884 

 was commuted ( see PENSIONS ). 



See Macaulay's Hittory of England, and J. Paget's 

 Inquiry into the Evidence of the Charges brought by Lord 

 Macaulay agaimt WiUiam Penn (1858); the Lire pre- 

 fixed to his collected works ( 2 vols. 1726 ), and to later 

 issues of 'select works;' and Lives by Clarkson (1849), 

 Hepworth Dixon (new ed. 1856), Robert J. Burdette 

 (New York, 18X2), and Stoughton (newed. 1883). 



IVimalisiii. See FAQGING. 



Pen-nanies. See PSEUDONYMS. 



Pennant, THOMAS, traveller, was born of a 

 good old Welsh family at Downing, near Holywell, 

 Flintshire, 14th June 1726, and was educated at 

 Wrexham, Fulham, and Hadley. In 1744 he went 

 up to Queen's College, Oxford, but he left without 

 taking a degree, having meanwhile, in 1746, ridden 

 down into Cornwall the first of his many tours. 

 These included visits to Ireland (1754); the Con- 

 tinent (1765), where he made the acquaintance of 

 Buffon and Voltaire; Scotland (1769 and 1772), 

 which ' was then," he says, ' almost as unknown 

 as Kamchatka, but ever since has been inondee 

 with southern visitants ; ' and the Isle of Man 

 (1774), besides rambles through England and his 

 native principality. He married twice, in 1759 

 and 1777 ; was made member of the Royal Society 

 of Upsala, an F.K.S., and a D.C.L. of Oxford ; and 

 died at Downing, 16th December 1798. 



From lx>yhood a naturalist, for years a corre- 

 spondent of Linn.neus, Pennant published British 

 Zoology (1765-77), British Quadrupeds (1771), 

 Arctic Zoology( l~8o),History of London (1790), &c. ; 

 but to-day he is chiefly remem- 

 bered by his Tours in Scotland 

 (3 vols. 1771-75) and Wales (2 

 vols. 1778-81), the former of 

 which works extorted from 

 Johnson the admission : ' He 's 

 a Whig, sir, a sad dog; but 

 he 's the best traveller I ever 

 read ; he observes more things 

 than any one else does.' 



See the amusing Literary Life of 

 the late Thomas Pennant, Esq., by 

 Himtelf (1793), and the memoir 

 prefixed to Professor Rhys's edition 

 of the Tours in Wale (3 vols. 

 Carnarvon, 1883). 



IV ii ii a t ii la. an interesting 

 animal whose quill or feather- 

 like appearance is suggested 

 by the title and by the popular 

 name Sea-pen. It is one of the 

 Alcyonarian Actinozoa, in the 

 same sub-class as Dead-men's 

 Fingers, lied Coral, Gorgonia, 

 &c. One species (P. phos- 

 phorea) is not uncommon at 

 moderate depths (e.g. 20 

 fathoms) round British coasts. 

 It consists of a basal stalk, by 

 which the animal is probably fixed upright in the 

 mud, and of a free axis bearing numerous polypes. 

 The whole length is about 4-6 inches ; the colour is 



Fig. 1. 

 Ventral View of Pen- 

 nalula pho&phorea 

 ( about one-half nat- 

 ural size). 



