第261章 CHAPTER V(67)

William Penn was, during the reign of James the Second, the most active and powerful solicitor about the Court. I will quote the words of his admirer Crose. "Quum autem Pennus tanta gratia plurinum apud regem valeret, et per id perplures sibi amicos acquireret, illum omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua notitia erant conjuncti, quoties aliquid a rege postulandum agendumve apud regem esset, adire, ambire, orare, ut eos apud regem adjuvaret."He was overwhelmed by business of this kind, "obrutus negotiationibus curationibusque." His house and the approaches to it were every day blocked up by crowds of persons who came to request his good offices; "domus ac vestibula quotidie referta clientium et suppliccantium." From the Fountainhall papers it appears that his influence was felt even in the highlands of Scotland. We learn from himself that, at this time, he was always toiling for others, that he was a daily suitor at Whitehall, and that, if he had chosen to sell his influence, he could, in little more than three, years, have put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket, and obtained a hundred thousand more for the improvement of the colony of which he was proprietor.

Such was the position of these two men. Which of them, then, was the more likely to be employed in the matter to which Sunderland's letter related? Was it George or William, an agent of the lowest or of the highest class? The persons interested were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace. where George would hardly have been admitted into an outer room, but where William was every day in the presence chamber and was frequently called into the closet. The greatest nobles in the kingdom were zealous and active in the cause of their fair friends, nobles with whom William lived in habits of familiar intercourse, but who would hardly have thought George fit company for their grooms. The sum in question was seven thousand pounds, a sum not large when compared with the masses of wealth with which William had constantly to deal, but more than a hundred times as large as the only ransom which is known to have passed through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice to raise a strong presumption that Sunderland's letter was addressed to William, and not to George: but there is a still stronger argument behind.

It is most important to observe that the person to whom this letter was addressed was not the first person whom the Maids of Honour had requested to act for them. They applied to him because another person to whom they had previously applied, had, after some correspondence, declined the office. From their first application we learn with certainty what sort of person they wished to employ. If their first application had been made to some obscure pettifogger or needy gambler, we should be warranted in believing that the Penne to whom their second application was made was George. If, on the other hand, their first application was made to a gentleman of the highest consideration, we can hardly be wrong in saying that the Penne to whom their second application was made must have been William. To whom, then, was their first application made? It was to Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parliament. The letters are still extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke, not a man very likely to have corresponded with George Penne, pressed Sir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of those letters is dated about three weeks before Sunderland's letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir Francis that the town clerk of Bridgewater, whose name, I may remark in passing, is spelt sometimes Bird and sometimes Birde, had offered his services, but that those services had been declined. It is clear, therefore, that the Maids of Honour were desirous to have an agent of high station and character. And they were right. For the sum which they demanded was so large that no ordinary jobber could safely be entrusted with the care of their interests.

As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the negotiation, it became necessary for the Maids of Honour and their advisers to choose somebody who might supply his place; and they chose Penne. Which of the two Pennes, then, must have been their choice, George, a petty broker to whom a percentage on sixty-five pounds was an object, and whose highest ambition was to derive an infamous livelihood from cards and dice, or William, not inferior in social position to any commoner in the kingdom?

Is it possible to believe that the ladies, who, in January, employed the Duke of Somerset to procure for them an agent in the first rank of the English gentry, and who did not think an attorney, though occupying a respectable post in a respectable corporation, good enough for their purpose, would, in February, have resolved to trust everything to a fellow who was as much below Bird as Bird was below Warre?