ted. He was speaking in Wiemart, at a meeting in the
mansion-house of the Somerdykes, and was illustrating his exhortations
from his own experience. He passed in rapid review the incidents of his
early life which we have recounted. "Here I began to let them know," he
says, "how and where the Lord first appeared unto me, which was about
the twelfth year of my age, in 1656; how at times, betwixt that and the
fifteenth, the Lord visited me, and the divine impressions he gave me of
himself." Then the banishment from Oxford, and his father's turning him
out of doors. "Of the Lord's dealings with me in France, and in the time
of the great plague in London, in fine, the deep sense he gave me of the
vanity of this world, of the deep irreligiousness of the religions of
it; then of my mournful and bitter cries to him that he would show me
his own way of life and salvation, and my resolution to follow him,
whatever reproaches or sufferings should attend me, and that with great
reverence and tenderness of spirit; how, after all this, the glory of
the world overtook me, and I was even ready to give myself up unto it,
seeing as yet no such thing as the 'primitive spirit and church' upon
earth, and being ready to faint concerning my 'hope of the restitution
of all things.' It was at this time that the Lord visited me with a
certain sound and testimony of his eternal word, through one of them the
world calls Quakers, namely, Thomas Loe."

Struggling, as Penn was, against continual temptations to abandon his
high ideal, getting no help from his parents, who were displeased at
him, nor from the clergy, whose "invectiveness and cruelty" he
remembers, nor from his companions, who made themselves strange to him;
bearing meanwhile "that great cross of resisting and watching against
mine own inward vain affections and thoughts," the only voice of help
and strength was that of Thomas Loe. Seeking for the "primitive spirit
and church upon earth," he found it in the sect which Loe represented.
His mind was now resolved. He, too, would be a Quaker.

IV

PENN BECOMES A QUAKER: PERSECUTION AND CONTROVERSY

William now began to attend Quaker meetings, though he was still dressed
in the gay fashions which he had learned in France. His sincerity was
soon tested. A proclamation made against Fifth Monarchy men was so
enforced as to affect Quakers. A meeting at which Penn was present was
broken in upon by constables, backed with soldiers, who