am's course at college. It is doubtful whether
he was expelled or only suspended. He was dismissed, and never returned.
Eight years after, chancing to pass through Oxford, and learning that
Quaker students were still subjected to the rigors of academic
discipline, he wrote a letter to the vice-chancellor. It probably
expresses the sentiments with which as an undergraduate he had regarded
the university authorities: "Shall the multiplied oppressions which thou
continuest to heap upon innocent English people for their religion pass
unregarded by the Eternal God? Dost thou think to escape his fierce
wrath and dreadful vengeance for thy ungodly and illegal persecution of
his poor children? I tell thee, no. Better were it for thee thou hadst
never been born." And so on, in the controversial dialect of the time,
calling the vice-chancellor a "poor mushroom," and abusing him
generally. Elsewhere, in a retrospect which I shall presently quote at
length, he refers to his university experiences: "Of my persecution at
Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that hellish
darkness and debauchery; of my being banished the college."

III

IN FRANCE AND IRELAND: THE WORLD AND THE OTHER WORLD

In his retrospect of his early life, Penn notes what immediately
followed his departure from the university: "The bitter usage I
underwent when I returned to my father,--whipping, beating, and turning
out of doors in 1662."

The admiral was thoroughly angry. He was at best but imperfectly
acquainted with his son, of whom in his busy life he had seen but
little, and was therefore unprepared for such extraordinary conduct. He
was by no means a religious person. For the spiritual, or even the
ecclesiastical, aspects of the matter, he cared nothing. But he had, as
Clarendon perceived, a strong desire to be well thought of by those who
composed the good society of the day. He expected the members of his
family to deport themselves as befitted such society. And here was
William, whom he had carefully sent to a college where he would
naturally consort with the sons of titled families, taking up with a
religious movement which would bring him into the company of cobblers
and tinkers. It is said, indeed, that Robert Spencer, afterwards Earl of
Sunderland, helped William destroy the surplices. But this is denied;
and even if it were true, it would be plain, from Spencer's after
career, that he did it not for the principle, but for