most Americans
believe to have been the wrong side in the Revolution of 1688.

Penn was closely tied by both interest and friendship to Charles II and
the Stuart family. When Charles II died in 1685 and his brother, the
Duke of York, ascended the throne as James II, Penn was equally bound
to him, because among other things the Duke of York had obtained Penn's
release in 1669 from imprisonment for his religious opinions. He became
still more bound when one of the first acts of the new King's reign
was the release of a great number of people who had been imprisoned
for their religion, among them thirteen hundred Quakers. In addition to
preaching to the Quakers and protecting them, Penn used his influence
with James to secure the return of several political offenders from
exile. His friendship with James raised him, indeed, to a position of no
little importance at Court. He was constantly consulted by the King, in
whose political policy he gradually became more and more involved.

James was a Roman Catholic and soon perfected his plans for making both
Church and State a papal appendage and securing for the Crown the right
to suspend acts of Parliament. Penn at first protested, but finally
supported the King in the belief that he would in the end establish
liberty. In his earlier years, however, Penn had written pamphlets
arguing strenuously against the same sort of despotic schemes that
James was now undertaking; and this contradiction of his former position
seriously injured his reputation even among his own people.

Part of the policy of James was to grant many favors to the Quakers and
to all other dissenting bodies in England, to release them from prison,
to give them perfect freedom of worship, and to remove the test laws
which prevented them from holding office. He thus hoped to unite them
with the Roman Catholics in extirpating the Church of England
and establishing the Papacy in its place. But the dissenters and
nonconformists, though promised relief from sufferings severer than
it is possible perhaps now to appreciate, refused almost to a man this
tempting bait. Even the Quakers, who had suffered probably more than
the others, rejected the offer with indignation and mourned the
fatal mistake of their leader Penn. All Protestant England united in
condemning him, accused him of being a secret Papist and a Jesuit in
disguise, and believed him guilty of acts and intentions of which he
was probably entirely innocent