, whom he dressed like a prince.

Imagine the Admiral's despair when he learned one morning that his son
was hobnobbing with the Quakers! Just then a new sect of religious
people who called themselves Quakers, or Friends, had sprung up in
England. They were much despised. A Quaker believed that all men are
equal, so he never took his hat off to any one, not even the king. The
Quakers would not take an oath in court; would not go to war or pay
money in support of war; always said "thee" and "thou" in addressing
each other, and wore plain clothes and sober colors. They thought they
ought always to act as their consciences told them to.

In England and Massachusetts, Quakers were treated like criminals. Some
of them were put to death. But the more they were abused, the more their
faith became known, and the more followers they had.

A traveling Quaker preacher went to Oxford, and when young William Penn
heard him, he decided that he had found a religion that suited him. He
stopped going to college services, declared he would not wear the
college gown, and even tore the gowns from other students. He was
expelled from Oxford.

The Admiral was very angry. He told his son he had disgraced him. But he
knew William had a strong will, and instead of having many harsh words
with him, sent his son off to Paris. "I flatter myself," laughed the
Admiral, "that in gay, fashionable Paris, William will soon forget his
foolish ideas about the Quakers."

The young people of Paris made friends with William at once, for he was
handsome and jolly. He was eighteen years old. He had large eyes and
long dark hair which fell in curls about his shoulders. For a time he
entered into all the gay doings of Paris and spent a long time in Italy.
So when he returned to England, two years later, his father nodded
approval at the change in his looks and ways. He seemed to have
forgotten the new religion entirely. But presently an awful plague swept
over London, and William grew serious again. The Admiral now packed the
boy off to Ireland. He was bound to stop this Quaker business.

There was some kind of a riot or war in Ireland, and William fought in
the thickest of it, for he liked to be in the midst of whatever was
going on. One evening he heard that the old Quaker preacher he had liked
at Oxford was preaching near by. He, with some other soldiers, went to
hear him, and all his love for the Quaker faith came back to him, and he
joined the society