He now began to attend the meetings of this despised and persecuted sect, and soon learned to feel the bitter martyrdom to which he had given up all his future hopes. In no part of these islands were the Quakers of that time treated as men and as brethren--and least of any where in Ireland. Confounded by ignorant and zealous magistrates with those sterner Puritans who had lately ruled the land with a rod of iron, and had now fallen into the position of a vanquished and prostrate party--they were held up to ridicule in polite society, and pilloried by the vulgar in the market-place. On the 3d of September (1667), a meeting of these harmless people was being held in Cork when a company of soldiers broke in upon them, made the whole congregation prisoners and carried them before the mayor on a charge of riot and tumultuous assembling. Seeing William Penn, the lord of Shangarry Castle and an intimate friend of the viceroy, among the prisoners, the worthy magistrate wished to set him at liberty on simply giving his word to keep the peace, but not knowing that he had violated any law he refused to enter into terms, and was sent to jail with the rest. From the prison he wrote to his friend the Earl of Ossory--Lord President of Munster--giving an account of his arrest and detention. An order was of course sent to the mayor for his immediate discharge; but the incident had made known to all the gossips of Dublin the fact that the young courtier and soldier had turned Quaker. His friends at the vice-regal court were greatly distressed at this untoward event. The earl wrote off to the admiral to inform him of his son's danger, stating the bare facts just as they had come to his knowledge. The family were thunderstruck. The father especially was seriously annoyed; he thought the boy's conduct not only mad but what was far worse in that libertine age--ridiculous. The world was beginning to laugh at him and his family:--he could bear it no longer. He wrote in peremptory terms, calling him to London. William obeyed without a word of expostulation. At the first interview between father and son nothing was said on the subject which both had so much at heart. The admiral scrutinized the youth with searching eyes--and as he observed no change in his costume, nor in his manner any of that formal stiffness which he thought the only distinction of the abhorred sect, he felt re-assured. His son was still dressed like a gentleman; he wore lace and ruffles, plume and rapier; the graceful curls of the cavalier still fell in natural clusters about his neck and shoulders: he began to hope that his noble correspondent had erred in his friendly haste. But a few days served to dissipate this illusion. He was first struck with the circumstance that his son omitted to uncover in the presence of his elders and superiors; and with somewhat of indignation and impatience in his tone demanded an interview and an explanation.