Cylchgronau Cymru

Vavasour Powell and his followers believed the 'Fifth Monarchy'- the second coming of Christ to rule on earth would follow the pen- ultimate troubles of the Republic, "but the 29th of May 1660 saw the coming to London not of the expected Fifth Monarch, but of a verv merry and material 'Fourth Monarch', Charles Stuart."(5) In Charles Stuart's train there returned many men with long mem- ories of indignities and deprivations, and a host of petty tyrants sprang up, anxious to show their zeal for the restored order by persecution of their dissenting neighbours. Parliament was only too willing to en- courage their activities, and loaded the Statute Book with a mass of penal legislation. Some of the laws were especially directed against the Quakers, who by their refusal to use the customary deferential forms of address, or to show deference to rank and authority, or to take the legal oaths, made themselves obvious targets. Besides that, they could be harassed and persecuted without fear of covert reprisals. In 1660 the meetings of the Radnorshire Quakers were broken up by soldiers armed with swords and staves.(6) Fines were imposed on them, as well as upon Baptists and Catholics, for not attending their parish churches.(7) Their appearance in court was made an opportunity for tendering the 'oath of allegiance', and their refusal was punished by imprisonment. Many of the restored clergy joined in the chase and distrained on their goods for unpaid tithes, and secured their committal to prison on writs of de excommunicato capiendo. It says a great deal for the dogged persistence of the Radnorshire Quakers and Baptists that they stood firm in the face of all this. The persecutions went on for twenty years, with brief intermissions which were the result of individual action on the part of Charles II, rather than any slackening of the persecuting zeal. His Declaration of Indul- gence in 1672 may have been primarily intended for the relief of his fellow Catholics, but the Merry Monarch undoubtedly sympathised with those dissenters who suffered with them. His Parliament, however, was too strong for him on this subject, and he was forced to revoke the Declaration, and after 1675 the persecution was once more in full swing. This was the state of affairs in Britain when the King granted William Penn a great tract of land in North America in settlement of the debts he owed Penn's father. Charles himself christened it Penn- sylvania, in honour, he said, of the father, and against the wishes of William Penn who suggested that it should be called 'New Wales'. The grant was finally sealed on March 14th, 1681, when Penn became the proprietor of a tract three hundred miles by a hundred and sixty, con- taining only a thin scatter of Swedish farmers along the banks of the Delaware river, and the small town of Upland (now Chester). Two months after the grant had been made Penn held a meeting in May 1861, with a number of prominent Welsh Quakers, to discuss his plans for the settlement of his new colony. Penn seems to have been