After some time the fugitive must have thought that the government might have become more friendly to him, for he tried to get Lord Rochester to make his peace with King William. He said that if the king would dismiss the charges against him, he would go back to Pennsylvania, although he would like first to go to Ireland and try to recover some of his ruined estates. There was now less fear of conspiracies of followers of James II.; moreover, the government may well have thought that there was little danger to be feared from Penn; and that they would be well rid of him if he would go to Pennsylvania and use his energies in straightening out matters there. Three noblemen, Lords Rochester, Ranelagh, and Romney, the new title of his friend Henry Sydney, saw the king on Penn's behalf. William was willing to be lenient. So Penn was able to write this interesting letter to his friends in his American colony: "This comes by the Pennsylvania Merchant,--Harrison, commander, and C. Saunders, merchant. By them and this know, that it hath pleased God to work my enlargement, by three Lords representing my case as not only hard, but oppressive; that there was nothing against me but what impostors, or those that are fled, or that have, since their pardon refused to verify (and asked me pardon for saying what they did), alleged against me; that they had long known me, some of them thirty years, and had never known me to do an ill thing, but many good offices; and that for not being thought to go abroad in defiance of the Government, I might and would have done it two years ago; and that I was, therefore, willing to wait to go about my affairs, as before, with leave; that I might be the better respected in the liberty I took to follow it.