So William Penn, already considerable of a courtier, became a Quaker; and contrived, strange though it seems, to be both things at one and the same time. His father had been both a Roundhead and a Royalist, though in his case it had always been from motives of self-interest. The son was now to combine two widely different types of man, but with him this resulted entirely from the two sides of his nature. Yet it was a very odd combination, that of a Quaker and a courtier, and one sure to bring him into many curious situations. CHAPTER IV THE YOUNG QUAKER COURTIER William Penn had studied at Oxford, had traveled and mixed with gay people on the Continent, had been entered as a law student at Lincoln's Inn, had been employed by the Duke of Ormond in Ireland, and now had decided to throw in his lot with the people of this new religion that had suddenly sprung up in England and who called themselves by the simple name of Friends. He stayed in Ireland, looking after his father's business at Kinsale, still wearing the bright clothes of a cavalier, but he went regularly to all the meetings of Quakers that were held in Cork. These meetings were no more popular with the government in Ireland than in England, and while Penn was attending one on September 3, 1667, several constables, with a squad of soldiers, appeared at the doors and arrested everybody on the charge of holding a riotous assembly. There is a story, perhaps not altogether true, that, as the first soldier entered the hall to break up the meeting, William Penn seized him by the collar, and would have thrown him down the stairs had not some older members interfered and told the young man that such an act would be inconsistent with the Quaker's love of peace. Penn, however, was probably not as hot-headed as the story would indicate; he went with the other Quakers to the mayor, and that official, seeing that the young man wore cavalier dress, offered to set him free if he would give bond for his future good behavior. Penn would not agree to this; instead he argued that the arrest of the Quakers was altogether unlawful. Thereupon he was sent to prison, and from there he wrote a remarkably well-worded letter to the Earl of Orrery, the Lord President of Munster, setting forth the injustice of interfering in such a way with any people's religion.